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THE BOOK OF 
THE NATIONAL PARKS 




From the painting by Cliris Joraenson 

ZOROASTER FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE GRAND CANYON 
Nature's greatest example of stream erosion 



THE BOOK OF 
1 HE NATIONAL PARKS 



BY 

ROBERT STERLING YARD 

CBIEr, EDUCATIONAL DIVISION, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, DEPARTMENT 

OF THE INTERIOR 

AUTHOR OF "THE NATIONAL PARKS PORTFOUO " 

"THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT," ETC. 



WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
1919 



Copyright, 1919, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Published June, 1919 



JU'i d« i9(9 




3,oc 



©CI.A53004t') 



/^? 



^c 



TO 
STEPHEN T. MATHER 



PREFACE 

In offering the American public a carefully studied 
outline of its national park system, I have two prin- 
cipal objects. The one is to describe and differentiate 
the national parks in a manner which will enable the 
reader to appreciate their importance, scope, meaning, 
beauty, manifold uses and enormous value to indi- 
vidual and nation. The other is to use these parks, 
in which Nature is writing in large plain lines the 
story of America's making, as examples illustrating 
the several kinds of scenery, and what each kind 
means in terms of world building; in other words, to 
translate the practical findings of science into unscien- 
tific phrase for the reader's increased profit and pleas- 
ure, not only in his national parks but in all other 
scenic places great and small. 

At the outset I have been confronted with a diffi- 
culty because of this double objective. The role of 
the interpreter is not always welcome. If I write 
what is vaguely known as a "popular" book, wise 
men have warned me that any scientific intrusion, 
however lightly and dramatically rendered, will dis- 
please its natural audience. If I write the simplest 
of scientific books, I am warned that a large body of 
warm-blooded, wholesome, enthusiastic Americans, 
the very ones above all others whose keen enjoyment 

vii 



viii PREFACE 

I want to double by doubling their sources of pleasure, 
will have none of it. The suggestion that I make my 
text "popular" and carry my "science" in an appen- 
dix I promptly rejected, for if I cannot give the scien- 
tific aspects of nature their readable values in the 
text, I cannot make them worth an appendix. 

Now I fail to share with my advisers their poor 
opinion of the taste, enterprise, and intelligence of the 
wide-awake American, but, for the sake of my message, 
I yield in some part to their warnings. Therefore I 
have so presented my material that the miscalled, 
and, I verily believe, badly slandered "average reader," 
may have his "popular" book by omitting the note on 
the Appreciation of Scenery, and the several notes 
explanatory of scenery which are interpolated between 
groups of chapters. If it is true, as I have been told, 
that the "average reader" would omit these anyway, 
because it is his habit to omit prefaces and notes of 
every kind, then nothing has been lost. 

he keen inquiring reader, however, the reader 
who wants to know values and to get, in the eloquent 
phrase of the day, all that's coming to him, will have 
the whole story by beginning the book with the note 
on the Appreciation of Scenery, and reading it consec- 
utively, interpolated notes and all. As this will in- 
volve less than a score of additional pages, I hope to 
get the message of the national parks in terms of their 
fullest enjoyment before much the greater part of the 
book's readers. 

The pleasure of writing this book has many times 



PREFACE ix 

repaid its cost in labor, and any helpfulness it may 
have in advancing the popularity of our national 
parks, in building up the system's worth as a national 
economic asset, and in increasing the people's pleasure 
in all scenery by helping them to appreciate their 
greatest scenery, will come to me as pure profit. It 
is my earnest hope that this profit may be large. 

A similar spirit has actuated the very many who 
have helped me acquire the knowledge and experience 
to produce it; the officials of the National Park Ser- 
vice, the superintendents and several rangers in the 
national parks, certain zoologists of the United States 
Biological Survey, the Director and many geologists 
of the United States Geological Survey, scientific ex- 
perts of the Smithsonian Institution, and professors 
in several distinguished universities. Many men have 
been patient and untiring in assistance and helpful 
criticism, and to these I render warm thanks for my- 
self and for readers who may benefit by their work. 



CONTENTS 



PACK 

Preface vii 



THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

On the Appreciation of Scenery 3 

I. The National Parks of the United States 17 

THE GRANITE NATIONAL PARKS 

Granite's Part in Scenery 33 

ii. yosemite, the incomparable 36 

III. The Proposed Roosevelt National Park . 69 

IV. The Heart of the Rockies 93 

V. McKiNLEY, Giant of Giants 118 

VI. Lafayette and the East 132 

THE VOLCANIC NATIONAL PARKS 

On the Volcano in Scenery 145 

VII. Lassen Peak and Mount Katmai 148 

VIII. Mount Rainier, Icy Octopus 159 

IX. Crater Lake's Bowl of Indigo 184 

X. Yellowstone, a Volcanic Interlude ... 202 

XI. Three Monsters of Hawaii 229 

zi 



xii CONTENTS 

THE SEDIMENTARY NATIONAL PARKS 

PAGE 

XII. On Sedimentary Rock in Scenery .... 247 

XIII. Glaciered Peaks and Painted Shales ... 251 

XIV. Rock Records of a Vanished Race .... 284 
XV. The Healing Waters 305 

THE GRAND CANYON AND OUR NATIONAL 
MONUMENTS 

On the Scenery of the Southwest .... 321 

XVI. A Pageant of Creation 328 

XVII. The Rainbow of the Desert 352 

XVIII. Historic Monuments of the Southwest . . 367 

XIX. Desert Spectacles 385 

XX. The Muir Woods and Other National Mon- 
uments 404 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Zoroaster from the depths of the Grand Canyon . . . Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

The Rainbow Natural Bridge, Utah 8 

Middle fork of the Belly River, Glacier National Park ... 12 

General Grant Tree 18 

The Giant Geyser — greatest in the world 22 

The Yosemite Falls — highest in the world 26 

El Capitan, survivor of the glaciers 44 

Half Dome, Yosemite's hooded monk 46 

The climax of Yosemite National Park 56 

The greatest waterwheel of the Tuolumne 56 

Tehipite Dome, guardian rock of the Tehipite Valley ... 82 

East Vidette from a forest of foxtail pines 84 

Bull Frog Lake, proposed Roosevelt National Park .... 90 

Under a giant sequoia 00 

Estes Park Plateau, looking east 96 

Front range of the Rockies from Bierstadt Lake 96 

Summit of Longs Peak, Rocky Mountain National Park . . no 

The Andrews Glacier hangs from the Continental Divide . . 114 

A Rocky Mountain cirque carved from solid granite .... 114 

Mount McKinley, looming above the great Alaskan Range . 128 

Archdeacon Stuck's party half-way up the mountain .... 128 

The summit of Mount McKinley 128 

In Lafayette National Park 134 

ziii 



xiv ILLUSTRATIONS 

r ACIKG PAGE 

Sea caves in the granite 134 

Frenchman's Bay from the east cliff of Champlain Mountain . 140 

Lassen Peak seen from the southwest 152 

Lassen Peak close up 152 

Southeast slope of Mount Rainier 162 

Mount St. Helens seen from Mount Rainier Park .... 166 

Mount Adams seen from Mount Rainier Park 166 

Sluiskin Ridge and Columbia Crest 172 

Mount Rainier seen from Tacoma 172 

Mount Rainier and Paradise Inn in summer 1 74 

Winter pleasures at Paradise Inn, Mount Rainier 174 

Button Cliff and the Phantom Ship, Crater Lake 190 

Sunset from Garfield Peak, Crater Lake National Park . . 190 

Applegate Cliff, Crater Lake 194 

Phantom Ship from Garfield Peak 194 

The Excelsior Geyser which blew out in 1888; Yellowstone . 216 

One of the terraces at Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone . 216 

Yellowstone Valley from the upper fall to the lower fall . . 220 

The lower fall and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone . . 220 

The Teton Mountain from Jackson Hole, south of Yellow- 
stone 228 

The lava landscape of the Yellowstone and Gibbon Falls . . 228 

The Kilauea Pit of Fire, Hawaii National Park 238 

Within the crater of Kilauea 238 

The Great Gable of Gould Mountain 272 

The Cirque at the head of Cut Bank Creek 272 

Ptarmigan Lake and Mount Wilbur, Glacier National Park . 276 

Scooped both sides by giant glaciers 276 



I 



ILLUSTRATIONS xv 

lACING PACE 

Showing the Agazziz Glacier 282 

Beautiful Bowman Lake, Glacier National Park 282 

Prehistoric pottery from Mesa Verde 298 

Sun Temple, Mesa Verde National Park 302 

Spruce Tree House from across the canyon 302 

On Hot Springs Mountain, Hot Springs of Arkansas .... 308 

Bath House Row, Hot Springs of Arkansas 308 

Sunset from Grand View, Grand Canyon National Park . . 340 

Camping party on the South Rim 344 

Down Hermit Trail from rim to river 344 

Through the Granite Gorge surges the muddy Colorado . . 346 

When morning mists lift from the depths of the Grand Canyon 346 

El Gobernador, Zion National Monument 362 

Zion Canyon from the rim 364 

The Three Patriarchs, Zion Canyon 364 

Casa Grande National Monument 374 

Prehistoric cave homes in the Bandelier National Monument 374 

Tumacacori Mission 376 

Montezuma Castle 376 

Roosevelt party in Monument Valley 386 

Rainbow Bridge in full perspective 386 

The Petrified Forest of Arizona 396 

Petrified trunk forming a bridge over a canyon 396 

Cathedral Isle of the Muir Woods 406 

Pinnacles National Monument 412 

The Devil's Tower 4" 



MAPS AND DIAGRAMS 

FACE 

Cross-section of Crater Lake showing probable outline of 

Mount Mazama 189 

Cross-section of Crater Lake 191 

Map of Hawaii National Park 230 

FACING PAGE 

Outline of the Mesa Verde Formation 290 

Outlines of the Western and Eastern Temples, Zion National 

Monument 35^ 



AT END OF VOLUME 

Map of Yosemite National Park, California. 

Proposed Roosevelt National Park and the Sequoia and General 
Grant National Parks, California. 

The Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. 

Mount Rainier National Park, Washington. 

Crater Lake National Park, Oregon. 

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. 

Glacier National Park, Montana. 

Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado. 

Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. 

Zion National Monument, Utah. 



THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 



The Book of the National Parks 



ON THE APPRECIATION OF SCENERY 

To the average educated American, scenery is 
a pleasing hodge-podge of mountains, valleys, 
plains, lakes, and rivers. To him, the glacier-hollowed 
valley of Yosemite, the stream-scooped abyss of the 
Grand Canyon, the volcanic gulf of Crater Lake, the 
bristling granite core of the Rockies, and the ancient 
ice-carved shales of Glacier National Park all are one 
— ^just scenery, magnificent, incomparable, meaning- 
less. As a people we have been content to wonder, 
not to know; yet with scenery, as with all else, to 
know is to begin fully to enjoy. Appreciation measures 
enjoyment. And this brings me to my proposition, 
namely, that we shall not really enjoy our possession 
of the grandest scenery in the world until we realize 
that scenery is the written page of the History of 
Creation, and until we learn to read that page. 

The national parks of America include areas of 
the noblest and most diversified scenic sublimity easily 
accessible in the world; nevertheless it is their chiefest 
glory that they are among the completest expressions 
of the earth's history. The American people is waking 
rapidly to the magnitude of its scenic possession; it 
has yet to learn to appreciate it. 



4 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

Nevertheless we love scenery. We are a nation 
of sightseers. The year before the world war stopped 
all things, we spent $286,000,000 in going to Europe. 
That summer Switzerland's receipts from the sale of 
transportation and board to persons coming from for- 
eign lands to see her scenery was $100,000,000, and 
more than half, it has been stated apparently with 
authority, came from America. That same year tour- 
ist travel became Canada's fourth largest source of 
income, exceeding in gross receipts even her fisheries, 
and the greater part came from the United States; 
it is a matter of record that seven-tenths of the hotel 
registrations in the Canadian Rockies were from south 
of the border. Had we then known, as a nation, that 
there was just as good scenery of its kind in the United 
States, and many more kinds, we would have gone to 
see that; it is a national trait to buy the best. Since 
then, we have discovered this important fact and are 
crowding to our national parks. 

"Is it true," a woman asked me at the foot of 
Yosemite Falls, "that this is the highest unbroken 
waterfall in the world?" 

She was the average tourist, met there by chance. 
I assured her that such was the fact. I called atten- 
tion to the apparent dehberation of the water's fall, 
a trick of the senses resulting from failure to realize 
height and distance. 

"To think they are the highest in the world!'* 
she mused. 

I told her that the soft fingers of water had carved 



ON THE APPRECIATION OF SCENERY 5 

this valley three thousand feet into the solid granite, 
and that ice had polished its walls, and I estimated for 
her the ages since the Merced River flowed at the level 
of the cataract's brink. 

"I've seen the tallest building in the world," she 
replied dreamily, "and the longest railroad, and the 
largest lake, and the highest monument, and the big- 
gest department store, and now I see tlie^ highest 
waterfall. Just think of it!" 

If one has illusions concerning the average tourist, 
let him compare the hundreds who gape at the paint 
pots and geysers of Yellowstone with the dozens who 
exult in the sublimated glory of the colorful canyon. 
Or let him listen to the table-talk of a party returned 
from Crater Lake. Or let him recall the statistical 
superlatives which made up his friend's last letter from 
the Grand Canyon. 

I am not condemning wonder, which, in its place, 
is a legitimate and pleasurable emotion. As a condi- 
ment to sharpen and accent an abounding sense of 
beauty it has real and abiding value. 

Love of beauty is practically a universal passion. 
It is that which lures millions into the fields, valleys, 
woods, and mountains on every holiday, which crowds 
our ocean lanes and railroads. The fact that few of 
these rejoicing millions are aware of their own motive, 
and that, strangely enough, a few even would be 
ashamed to make the admission if they became aware 
of it, has nothing to do with the fact. It's a wise 
man that knows his own motives. The fact that still 



6 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

fewer, whether aware or not of the reason of their hap- 
piness, are capable of making the least expression of 
it, also has nothing to do with the fact. The tourist 
woman whom I met at the foot of Yosemite Falls may 
have felt secretly suffocated by the filmy grandeur of 
the incomparable spectacle, notwithstanding that she 
was conscious of no higher emotion than the cheap 
wonder of a superlative. The Grand Canyon's rim 
is the stillest crowded place I know. I've stood 
among a hundred people on a precipice and heard the 
whir of a bird's wings in the abyss. Probably the 
majority of those silent gazers were suffering some- 
thing akin to pain at their inability to give vent to 
the emotions bursting within them. 

I believe that the statement can not be success- 
fully challenged that, as a people, our enjoyment of 
scenery is almost wholly emotional. Love of beauty 
spiced by wonder is the equipment for enjoyment of 
the average intelligent traveller of to-day. Now add 
to this a more or less equal part of the intellectual 
pleasure of comprehension and you have the equip- 
ment of the average inteUigent traveller of to-morrow. 
To hasten this to-morrow is one of the several objects 
of this book. 

To see in the carved and colorful depths of the 
Grand Canyon not only the stupendous abyss whose 
terrible beauty grips the soul, but also to-day's chap- 
ter in a thrilling story of creation whose beginning lay 
untold centuries back in the ages, whose scene covers 
three hundred thousand square miles of our wonder- 



ON THE APPRECIATION OF SCENERY 7 

ful southwest, whose actors include the greatest forces 
of nature, whose tremendous episodes shame the 
imagination of Dore, and whose logical end invites 
suggestions before which finite minds shrink — this is 
to come into the presence of the great spectacle prop- 
erly equipped for its enjoyment. But how many who 
see the Grand Canyon get more out of it than merely 
the beauty that grips the soul? 

So it is throughout the world of scenery. The 
geologic story written on the cliffs of Crater Lake is 
more stupendous even than the glory of its indigo 
bowl. The war of titanic forces described in simple 
language on the rocks of Glacier National Park is un- 
excelled in sublimity in the history of mankind. The 
story of Yellowstone's making multiplies many times 
the thrill occasioned by its world-famed spectacle. 
Even the simplest and smallest rock details often tell 
thrilling incidents of prehistoric times out of which 
the enlightened imagination reconstructs the romances 
and the tragedies of earth's earlier days. 

How eloquent, for example, was the small, water- 
worn fragment of dull coal we found on the limestone 
slope of one of Glacier's mountains ! Impossible com- 
panionship ! The one the product of forest, the other 
of submerged depths. Instantly I glimpsed the dis- 
tant age when thousands of feet above the very spot 
upon which I stood, but then at sea level, bloomed a 
Cretaceous forest, whose broken trunks and matted 
foliage deca}'ed in bogs where they slowly turned to 
coal; coal which, exposed and disintegrated during 



8 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

intervening ages, has long since — all but a few small 
fragments like this — ^washed into the headwaters of 
the Saskatchewan to merge eventually in the muds of 
Hudson Bay. And then, still dreaming, my mind 
leaped millions of years still further back to lake bot- 
toms where, ten thousand feet below the spot on 
which I stood, gathered the pre-Cambrian ooze which 
later hardened to this very limestone. From ooze a 
score of thousand feet, a hundred million years, to 
coal ! And both lie here together now in my palm ! 
Filled thus with visions of a perspective beyond hu- 
man comprehension, with what multiplied intensity 
of interest I now returned to the noble view from 
Gable Mountain ! 

In pleading for a higher understanding of Nature's 
method and accomplishment as a precedent to study 
and observation of our national parks, I seek enor- 
mously to enrich the enjoyment not only of these 
supreme examples but of all examples of world making. 
The same readings which will prepare you to enjoy 
to the full the message of our national parks will in- 
vest your neighborhood hills at home, your creek and 
river and prairie, your vacation valleys, the landscape 
through your car window, even your wayside ditch, 
with living interest. I invite you to a new and fas- 
cinating earth, an earth interesting, vital, personal, 
beloved, because at last known and understood ! 

It requires no great study to know and under- 
stand the earth well enough for such purpose as this. 
One does not have to dim his eyes with acres of maps. 




THE RAINBOW NATURAL BRIDGE, UTAH 

Cut out of red ami yellow sandstone by alternate heat and cold, by sand-laden winds, and 
bv stream erosion 



ON THE APPRECIATION OF SCENERY 9 

or become a plodding geologist, or learn to distinguish 
schists from granites, or to classify plants by table, 
or to call wild geese and marmots by their Latin 
names. It is true that geography, geology, physi- 
ography, mineralogy, botany and zoology must each 
contribute their share toward the condition of intelli- 
gence which will enable you to realize appreciation of 
Nature's amazing earth, but the share of each is so 
small that the problem will be solved, not by exhaus- 
tive study, but by the selection of essential parts. 
Two or three popular books which interpret natural 
science in perspective should pleasurably accompHsh 
your purpose. But once begim, I predict that few wiU 
fail to carry certain subjects beyond the mere essen- 
tials, while some wiU enter for life into a land of new 
delights. 

Let us, for illustration, consider for a moment 
the making of America. The earth, composed of 
countless aggregations of matter drawn together from 
the skies, whirled into a globe, settled into a solid mass 
surrounded by an atmosphere carrying water like a 
sponge, has reached the stage of development when 
land and sea have divided the surface between them, 
and successions of heat and frost, snow, ice, rain, and 
flood, are busy with their ceaseless carving of the land. 
Already mountains are wearing down and sea bottoms 
are building up with their refuse. Sediments carried 
by the rivers are depositing in strata, which some day 
will harden into rock. 

We are looking now at the close of the era which 



lo THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

geologists call Archean, because it is ancient beyond 
knowledge. A few of its rocks are known, but not well 
enough for many definite conclusions. All the earth's 
vast mysterious past is lumped under this title. 

The definite history of the earth begins with the 
close of the dim Archean era. It is the lapse from then 
till now, a few hundred million years at most out of 
all infinity, which ever can greatly concern man, for 
during this time were laid the only rocks whose read- 
ing was assisted by the presence of fossils. During 
this time the continents attained their final shape, 
the mountains rose, and valleys, plains, and rivers 
formed and re-formed many times before assmning 
the passing forms which they now show. During this 
time also life evolved from its inferred beginnings in 
the late Archean to the complicated, finely developed, 
and in man's case highly mentalized and spiritualized 
organization of To-day. 

Surely the geologist's field of labor is replete with 
interest, inspiration, even romance. But because it 
has become so saturated with technicality as to be- 
come almost a popular bugaboo, let us attempt no 
special study, but rather cull from its voluminous 
records those simple facts and perspectives which will 
reveal to us this greatest of all story books, our old 
earth, as the volume of enchantment that it really is. 

With the passing of the Archean, the earth had 
not yet settled into the perfectly balanced sphere 
which Nature destined it to be. In some places the 
rock was more compactly squeezed than in others, 



ON THE APPRECIATION OF SCENERY ii 

and these denser masses eventually were forced vio- 
lently into neighbor masses which were not so tightly 
squeezed. These movements far below the surface 
shifted the surface balance and became one of many 
complicated and little known causes impelling the 
crust here to slowly rise and there to slowly fall. Thus 
in places sea bottoms lifted above the surface and 
became land, while lands elsewhere settled and be- 
came seas. There are areas which have alternated 
many times between land and sea ; this is why we find 
limestones which were formed in the sea overlying 
shales which were formed in fresh water, which in 
turn overlie sandstones which once were beaches — all 
these now in plateaus thousands of feet above the 
ocean's level. 

Sometimes these mysterious internal forces lifted 
the surface in long waves. Thus mountain chains 
and mountain systems were created. Often their 
summits, worn down by frosts and rains, disclose the 
core of rock which, ages before, then hot and fluid, 
had underlain the crust and bent it upward into moun- 
tain form. Now, cold and hard, these masses are dis- 
closed as the granite of to-day's landscape, or as other 
igneous rocks of earth's interior which now cover 
broad surface areas, mingled with the stratified or 
water-made rocks which the surface only produces. 
But this has not always been the fate of the under- 
surface molten rocks, for sometimes they have burst 
by volcanic vents clear through the crust of earth, 
where, turned instantly to pumice and lava by release 



12 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

from pressure, they build great surface cones, cover 
broad plains and fill basins and valleys. 

Thus were created the three great divisions of the 
rocks which form the three great divisions of scenery, 
the sediments, the granites, and the lavas. 

During these changes in the levels of enormous 
surface areas, the frosts and water have been indus- 
triously working down the elevations of the land. 
Nature forever seeks a level. The snows of winter, 
melting at midday, sink into the rocks' minutest cracks. 
Expanded by the frosts, the imprisoned water pries 
open and chips the surface. The rains of spring and 
summer wash the chippings and other debris into 
rivulets, which carry them into mountain torrents, 
which rush them into rivers, which sweep them into 
oceans, which deposit them for the upbuilding of the 
bottoms. Always the level! Thousands of square 
miles of California were built up from ocean's bottom 
with sediments chiselled from the mountains of Wy- 
oming, Colorado, and Utah, and swept seaward through 
the Grand Canyon. 

These mills grind without rest or pause. The 
atmosphere gathers the moisture from the sea, the 
winds roll it in clouds to the land, the mountains catch 
and chill the clouds, and the resulting rains hurry 
back to the sea in rivers bearing heavy freights of soil. 
Spring, summer, autumn, winter, day and night, the 
mills of Nature labor unceasingly to produce her level. 
If ever this earth is really finished to Nature's liking, 
it will be as round and polished as a billiard ball. 





-♦-iTwr - 


"%» . -' ■' \ ■ ■:■: ,.;;-'... • ,^ 


1 ^'^^fc. • 


■mn.^.... ^mm' 


^ 





/^rom u photograph by Bailey Willis 

MIDDLE FORK OF THE BELLY RIVER, GLACIER NATIONAL PARK 

\"ery ancient shales and limestune fantastically car\'efl by glaciers. The illustration shows 
Glcnns Lake, Pyramid Peak, Chaney Glacier, and Mount Kipp 



ON THE APPRECIATION OF SCENERY 13 

Years mean nothing in the computation of the 
prehistoric past. Who can conceive a thousand cen- 
turies, to say nothing of a milhon years? Yet either 
is inconsiderable against the total lapse of time even 
from the Archean's close till now. 

And so geologists have devised an easier method 
of count, measured not by units of time, but by what 
each phase of progress has accomplished. This meas- 
ure is set forth in the accompanying table, together 
with a conjecture concerning the lapse of time in terms 
of years. 

The most illuminating accomplishment of the 
table, however, is its bird's-eye view of the procession 
of the evolution of life from the first inference of its 
existence to its climax of to-day; and, concurrent with 
this progress, its suggestion of the growth and devel- 
opment of scenic America. It is, in effect, the table 
of contents of a volume whose thrilling text and stu- 
pendous illustration are engraved immortally in the 
rocks; a volume whose ultimate secrets the scholar- 
ship of all time perhaps will never fully decipher, but 
whose dramatic outlines and many of whose most 
thrilling incidents are open to all at the expense of a 
little study at home and a little thoughtful seeing in 
the places where the facts are pictured in lines so big 
and graphic that none may miss their meanings. 

Man's colossal egotism is rudely shaken before the 
Procession of the Ages. Aghast, he discovers that the 
billions of years which have wrought this earth from 
star dust were not merely God's laborious preparation 



14 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 



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ON THE APPRECIATION OF SCENERY 15 

of a habitation fit for so admirable an occupant; that 
man, on the contrary, is nothing more or less than the 
present master tenant of earth, the highest type of 
hundreds of millions of years of succeeding tenants 
only because he is the latest in evolution. 

Who can safely declare that the day will not come 
when a new Yellowstone, hurled from reopened vol- 
canoes, shall found itself upon the buried ruin of the 
present Yellowstone; when the present Sierra shall 
have disappeared into the Pacific and the deserts of 
the Great Basin become the gardens of the hemi- 
sphere; when a new Rocky Mountain system shall 
have grown upon the eroded and dissipated granites 
of the present; when shallow seas shall join anew Hud- 
son Bay with the Gulf of Mexico; when a new and 
lofty Appalachian Range shall replace the rounded 
summits of to-day; when a race of beings as superior 
to man, intellectually and spiritually, as man is supe- 
rior to the ape, shall endeavor to reconstruct a picture 



NOTE EXPLANATORY OF THE ESTIMATE OF GEOLOGIC TIME IN THE 
TABLE ON THE OPPOSITE PAGE 

The general assumption of modem geologists is that a hundred million 
years have elapsed since the close of the Archean period; at least this is 
a round number, convenient for thinking and discussion. The recent 
tendency has been greatly to increase conceptions of geologic time over 
the highly conservative estimates of a few years ago, and a strong disposition 
is shown to regard the Algonkian period as one of very great length, ex- 
tremists even suggesting that it may have equalled all time since. For the 
purposes of this popular book, then, let us conceive that the earth has 
existed for a hundred million years since Archean times, and that one-third 
of this was Algonkian; and let us apportion the two- thirds remaining 
among succeeding eras in the average of the proportions adopted by Pro- 
fessor Joseph Barrell of Yale University, whose recent speculations upon 
geologic time have attracted wide attention. 



i6 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

of man from the occasional remnants which floods 
may wash into view? 

Fantastic, you may say. It is fantastic. So far 
as I know there exists not one fact upon which definite 
predictions such as these may be based. But also 
there exists not one fact which warrants specific denial 
of predictions such as these. And if any inference 
whatever may be made from earth's history it is the 
inevitable inference that the period in which man 
lives is merely one step in an evolution of matter, 
mind and spirit which looks forward to changes as 
mighty or mightier than those I have suggested. 

With so inspiring an outline, the study to which 
I invite you can be nothing but pleasurable. Space 
does not permit the development of the theme in the 
pages which follow, but the book will have failed if it 
does not, incidental to its main purposes, entangle the 
reader in the charm of America's adventurous past. 



THE NATIONAL PARKS OF THE UNITED STATES 

THE National Parks of the United States are 
areas of supreme scenic splendor or other unique 
quality which Congress has set apart for the pleasure 
and benefit of the people. At this writing they num- 
ber eighteen, sixteen of which lie within the boun- 
daries of the United States and are reached by rail 
and road. Those of greater importance have excel- 
lent roads, good trails, and hotels or hotel camps, or 
both, for the accommodation of visitors; also public 
camp grounds where visitors may pitch their own 
tents. Outside the United States there are two na- 
tional parks, one enclosing three celebrated volcanic 
craters, the other conserving the loftiest mountain on 
the continent. 



The starting point for any consideration of our 
national parks necessarily is the recently realized fact 
of their supremacy in world scenery. It was the sen- 
sational force of this realization which intensely at- 
tracted public attention at the outset of the new 
movement; many thousands hastened to see these 
wonders, and their reports spread the tidings through- 
out the land and gave the movement its increasing 
impetus. 

17 



i8 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

The simple facts are these: 

The Swiss Alps, except for several unmatchable 
individual features, are excelled in beauty, sublimity 
and variety by several of our own national parks, and 
these same parks possess other distinguished individual 
features unrepresented in kind or splendor in the Alps. 

The Canadian Rockies are more than matched in 
rich coloring by our Glacier National Park. Glacier 
is the Canadian Rockies done in Grand Canyon 
colors. It has no peer. 

The Yellowstone outranks by far any similar vol- 
canic area in the world. It contains more and greater 
geysers than all the rest of the world together; the 
next in rank are divided between Iceland and New 
Zealand. Its famous canyon is alone of its quality of 
beauty. Except for portions of the African jungle, 
the Yellowstone is probably the most populated wild 
animal area in the world, and its wild animals are 
comparatively fearless, even sometimes friendly. 

Mount Rainier has a single-peak glacier system 
whose equal has not yet been discovered. Twenty- 
eight living glaciers, some of them very large, spread, 
octopus-like, from its centre. It is four hours by 
rail or motor from Tacoma. 

Crater Lake is the deepest and bluest accessible 
lake in the world, occupying the hole left after one of 
our largest volcanoes had slipped back into earth's 
interior through its own rim. 

Yosemite possesses a valley whose compelling 
beauty the world acknowledges as supreme. The 




GENERAL (IRANT TREE 
It has a National Park all to itself 



i 



NATIONAL PARKS OF UNITED STATES 19 

valley is the centre of eleven hundred square miles of 
high altitude wilderness. 

The Sequoia contains more than a million sequoia 
trees, twelve thousand of which are more than ten 
feet in diameter, and some of which are the largest 
and oldest living things in the wide world. 

The Grand Canyon of Arizona is by far the 
hugest and noblest example of erosion in the world. 
It is gorgeously carved and colored. In sheer sub- 
limity it offers an unequalled spectacle. 

Mount McKinley stands more than 20,000 feet 
above sea level, and 17,000 feet above the surrounding 
valleys. Scenically, it is the world's loftiest moun- 
tain, for the monsters of the Andes and the Himalayas 
which surpass it in altitude can be viewed closely only 
from valleys from five to ten thousand feet higher 
than McKinley's northern valleys. 

The Hawaii National Park contains the fourth 
greatest dead crater in the world, the hugest living 
volcano, and the Kilauea Lake of Fire, which is unique 
and draws visitors from the world's four quarters. 

These are the principal features of America's 
world supremacy. They are incidental to a system of 
scenic wildernesses which in combined area as well as 
variety exceed the combined scenic wilderness play- 
grounds of similar class comfortably accessible else- 
where. No wonder, then, that the American public 
is overjoyed with its recently reaUzed treasure, and 
that the Government looks confidently to the rapid 
development of its new-found economic asset. The 



20 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

American public has discovered America, and no one 
who knows the American pubHc doubts for a moment 
what it will do with it. 

II 

The idea still widely obtains that our national 
parks are principally playgrounds. A distinguished 
member of Congress recently asked: "Why make these 
appropriations? More people visited Rock Creek 
Park here in the city of Washington last Sunday after- 
noon than went to the Yosemite all last summer. 
The country has endless woods and mountains which 
cost the Treasury nothing." 

This view entirely misses the point. The na- 
tional parks are recreational, of course. So are state, 
county and city parks. So are resorts of every kind. 
So are the fields, the woods, the seashore, the open 
country everywhere. We are living in an open-air 
age. The nation of outdoor livers is a nation of 
power, initiative, and sanity. I hope to see the time 
when available State lands everywhere, when every 
square mile from our national forest reserve, when 
even many private holdings are made accessible and 
comfortable, and become habited with summer tramp- 
ers and campers. It is the way to individual power 
and national efficiency. 

But the national parks are far more than recrea- 
tional areas. They are the supreme examples. They 
are the gallery of masterpieces. Here the visitor en- 
ters in a hoUer spirit. Here is inspiration. They are 



NATIONAL PARKS OF UNITED STATES 21 

also the museums of the ages. Here nature is still 
creating the earth upon a scale so vast and so plain that 
even the duU and the frivolous cannot fail to see and 
comprehend. 

This is no distinction without a difference. The 
difference is so marked that few indeed even of those 
who visit our national parks in a frivolous or merely 
recreational mood remain in that mood. The spirit 
of the great places brooks nothing short of silent rever- 
ence. I have seen men unconsciously lift their hats. 
The mind strips itself of affairs as one sheds a coat. 
It is the hour of the spirit. One returns to daily liv- 
ing with a springier step, a keener vision, and a broader 
horizon for having worshipped at the shrine of the 
Infinite. 

Ill 

The Pacific Coast Expositions of 191 5 marked the 
beginning of the nation's acquaintance with its na- 
tional parks. In fact, they were the occasion, if not 
the cause, of the movement for national parks devel- 
opment which found so quickly a country-wide re- 
sponse, and which is destined to results of large im- 
portance to individual and nation alike. Because 
thousands of those whom the expositions were ex- 
pected to draw westward would avail of the oppor- 
tunity to visit national parks, Secretary Lane, to 
whom the national parks suggested neglected oppor- 
tunity requiring business experience to develop, in- 
duced Stephen T. Mather, a Chicago business man with 



22 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

mountain-top enthusiasms, to undertake their prepa- 
ration for the unaccustomed throngs. Mr. Mather's 
vision embraced a correlated system of superlative 
scenic areas which should become the familiar play- 
grounds of the whole American people, a system which, 
if organized and administered with the efficiency of a 
great business, should even become, in time, the ren- 
dezvous of the sightseers of the world. He foresaw 
in the national parks a new and great national eco- 
nomic asset. 

The educational and other propaganda by which 
this movement was presented to the people, which 
the writer had the honor to plan and execute, won 
rapidly the wide support of the pubHc. To me the 
national parks appealed powerfully as the potential 
museums and classrooms for the popular study of the 
natural forces which made, and still are making, 
America, and of American fauna and flora. Here 
were set forth, in fascinating picture and lines so plain 
that none could fail to read and understand, the essen- 
tials of sciences whose real charm our rapid educa- 
tional methods impart to few. This book is the logi- 
cal outgrowth of a close study of the national parks, 
beginning with the inception of the new movement, 
from this point of view. 

How free from the partisan considerations com- 
mon in governmental organization was the birth of the 
movement is shown by an incident of Mr. Mather's 
inauguration into his assistant secretaryship. Secre- 
tary Lane had seen him at his desk and had started 




Copyrighl by n<jyiies. Si. Paul 

THE C.IAN'T GEVSER— GREATEST IX THE WORLD 
Yellowstone National Park 



NATIONAL PARKS OF UNITED STATES 23 

back to his own room. But he returned, looked in at 
the door, and asked: 

"Oh, by the way, Steve, what are your pohtics?" 

This book considers our national parks as they 
line up four years after the beginning of this move- 
ment. It shows them well started upon the long road 
to realization, with Congress, Government, and the 
people united toward a common end, with the schools 
and the universities interested, and, for the first time, 
with the railroads, the concessioners, the motoring in- 
terests, and many of the public-spirited educational 
and outdoor associations all pulling together under the 
inspiration of a recognized common motive. 

Of course this triumph of organization, for it is 
no less, could not have been accomplished nearly so 
quickly without the assistance of the closing of Europe 
by the great war. Previous to 191 5, Americans had 
been spending $300,000,000 a year in European 
travel. Nor could it have been accomplished at all 
if investigation and comparison had not shown that 
our national parks excel in supreme scenic quality 
and variety the combined scenery which is comfort- 
ably accessible in all the rest of the world together. 

To get the situation at the beginning of our book 
into full perspective, it must be recognized that, pre- 
vious to the beginning of our propaganda in 191 5, the 
national parks, as such, scarcely existed in the pubhc 
consciousness. Few Americans could name more than 
two or three of the fourteen existing parks. The 
Yosemite Valley and the Yellowstone alone were gen- 



24 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

erally known, but scarcely as national parks; most of 
the school geographies which mentioned them at all 
ignored their national character. The advertising 
folders of competing railroads were the principal 
sources of public knowledge, for few indeed asked for 
the compilation of rates and charges which the Gov- 
ernment then sent in response to inquiries for infor- 
mation. The parks had practically no administra- 
tion. The business necessarily connected with their 
upkeep and development was done by clerks as minor 
and troublesome details which distracted attention 
from more important duties; there was no one clerk 
whose entire concern was with the national parks. 
The American public still looked confidently upon the 
Alps as the supreme scenic area in the world, and 
hoped some day to see the Canadian Rockies. 

IV 

Originally the motive in park-making had been 
imalloyed conservation. It is as if Congress had said: 
"Let us lock this up where no one can run away with 
it; we don't need it now, but some day it may be valu- 
able." That was the instinct that led to the reser- 
vation of the Hot Springs of Arkansas in 1832, the 
first national park. Forty years later, when official 
investigation proved the truth of the amazing tales 
of Yellowstone's natural wonders, it was the instinct 
which led to the reservation of that largely unex- 
plored area as the second national park. Seventeen 
years after Yellowstone, when newspapers and sci- 



NATIONAL PARKS OF UNITED STATES 25 

entific magazines recounted the ethnological impor- 
tance of the Casa Grande Ruin in Arizona, it resulted 
in the creation of the third national park, notwith- 
standing that the area so conserved enclosed less than 
a square mile, which contained nothing of the kind 
and quality which to-day we recognize as essential 
to parkhood. This closed what may be regarded as 
the initial period of national parks conservation. It 
was wholly instinctive; distinctions, objectives, and 
policies were undreamed of. 

Less than two years after Casa Grande, which, 
by the way, has recently been re-classed a national 
monument, what may be called the middle period 
began brilliantly with the creation, in 1890, of the 
Yosemite, the Sequoia, and the General Grant National 
Parks, all parks in the true sense of the word, and all 
of the first order of scenic magnificence. Nine years 
later Mount Rainier was added, and two years after 
that wonderful Crater Lake, both meeting fully the 
new standard. 

What followed was human and natural. The 
term national park had begun to mean something in 
the neighborhoods of the parks. Yellowstone and 
Yosemite had long been household words, and the 
introduction of other areas to their distinguished 
company fired local pride in neighboring states. " Why 
should we not have national parks, too?" people 
asked. Congress, always the reflection of the popular 
will, and therefore not always abreast of the moment, 
was unprepared with reasons. Thus, during 1903 and 



26 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

1904, there were added to the Hst areas m North 
Dakota, South Dakota, and Oklahoma, which were 
better fitted for State parks than for association with 
the distinguished company of the nation's noblest. 

A reaction followed and resulted in what we may 
call the modem period. Far-sighted men in and out 
of Congress began to compare and look ahead. No 
hint yet of the splendid destiny of our national parks, 
now so clearly defined, entered the minds of these 
men at this time, but ideas of selection, of develop- 
ment and utilization undoubtedly began to take form. 
At least, conservation, as such, ceased to become a 
sole motive. Insensibly Congress, or at least a few 
men of vision in Congress, began to take account of 
stock and figure on realization. 

This healthy growth was helped materially by 
the public demand for the improvement of several of 
the national parks. No thought of appropriating 
money to improve the bathing facilities of Hot Springs 
had affected Congressional action for nearly half a 
century; it was enough that the curative springs had 
been saved from private ownership. Yellowstone 
was considered so altogether extraordinary, however, 
that Congress began in 1879 to appropriate yearly for 
its approach by road, and for the protection of its 
springs and geysers; but this was because Yellow- 
stone appealed to the public sense of wonder. It 
took twenty years more for Congress to understand 
that the public sense of beauty was also worth appro- 
priations. Yosemite had been a national park for 




From a p/wlograp/i hx Pilhbur 

THE YOSEMITE FALLS— HIGHEST I\ THE WORLD 
From the brink of the upper falls to the foot of the lower falls is almost half a mile 



i 



NATIONAL PARKS OF UNITED STATES 27 

nine years before it received a dollar, and then only 
when public demand for roads, trails, and accommoda- 
tions became insistent. 

But, once born, the idea took root and spread. 
It was fed by the press and magazine reports of the 
glories of the newer national parks, then attracting 
some public attention. It helped discrimination in 
the comparison of the minor parks created in 1903 
and 1904 with the greater ones which had preceded. 
The realization that the parks must be developed at 
public expense sharpened Congressional judgment as 
to what areas should and should not become national 
parks. 

From that time on Congress has made no mis- 
takes in selecting national parks. Mesa Verde be- 
came a park in 1905, Glacier in 1910, Rocky Moun- 
tain in 191 5, Hawaii and Lassen Volcanic in 19 16, 
Mount McKinley in 191 7, and Lafayette and the 
Grand Canyon in 1919. From that time on Congress, 
most conservatively, it is true, has backed its judg- 
ment with increasing appropriations. And in 1916 it 
created the National Park Service, a bureau of the 
Department of the Interior, to administer them in 
accordance with a definite policy. 



The distinction between the national forests and 
the national parks is essential to understanding. The 
national forests constitute an enormous domain ad- 



28 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

ministered for the economic commercialization of the^ 
nation's wealth of lumber. Its forests are handled 
scientifically with the object of securing the largest 
annual lumber output consistent with the proper con- 
servation of the future. Its spirit is commercial. 
The spirit of national park conservation is exactly 
opposite. It seeks no great territory — only those few 
spots which are supreme. It aims to preserve nature's 
handiwork exactly as nature made it. No tree is cut 
except to make way for road, trail or hotel to enable 
the visitor to penetrate and live among nature's 
secrets. Hunting is excellent in some of our national 
forests, but there is no game in the national parks; in 
these, wild animals are a part of nature's exhibits; 
they are protected as friends. 

It follows that forests and parks, so different in 
spirit and purpose, must be handled wholly separately. 
Even the rangers and scientific experts have objects 
so opposite and different that the same individual 
cannot efficiently serve both purposes. High specializa- 
tion in both services is essential to success. 

Another distinction which should be made is the 
difference between a national park and a national 
monument. The one is an area of size created by 
Congress upon the assumption that it is a supreme 
example of its kind and with the purpose of develop- 
ing it for public occupancy and enjoyment. The other 
is made by presidential proclamation to conserve an 
area or object which is historically, ethnologically, or 
scientifically important. Size is not considered, and 



NATIONAL PARKS OF UNITED STATES 29 



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30 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

development is not contemplated. The distinction is 
often lost in practice. Casa Grande is essentially a 
national monument, but had the status of a national 
park until 1918. The Grand Canyon, from every 
point of view a national park, was created a national 
monument and remained such until 1919. 



THE GRANITE NATIONAL PARKS 



GRANITE'S PART IN SCENERY 

THE granite national parks are Yosemite, Sequoia, 
including the proposed Roosevelt Park, General 
Grant, Rocky Mountain, and Mount McKinley. Gran- 
ite, as its name denotes, is granular in texture and ap- 
pearance. It is crystalline, which means that it is 
imperfectly crystallized. It is composed of quartz, feld- 
spar, and mica in varying proportions, and includes 
several common varieties which mineralogists dis- 
tinguish scientifically by separate names. 

Because of its great range and abundance, its 
presence at the core of mountain ranges where it is 
uncovered by erosion, its attractive coloring, its mas- 
siveness and its vigorous personality, it figures impor- 
tantly in scenery of magnificence the world over. In 
color granite varies from light gray, when it shines 
like silver upon the high summits, to warm rose or 
dark gray, the reds depending upon the proportion of 
feldspar in its composition. 

It produces scenic effects very different indeed 
from those resulting from volcanic and sedimentary 
rocks. While it bulks hugely in the higher moun- 
tains, running to enormous rounded masses below the 
level of the glaciers, and to jagged spires and pin- 
nacled walls upon the loftiest peaks, it is found also 
in many regions of hill and plain. It is one of our 
commonest American rocks. 

33 



34 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

Much of the loftiest and noblest scenery of the 
world is wrought in granite. The Alps, the Andes, 
and the Himalayas, all of which are world-celebrated 
for their lofty grandeur, are prevailingly granite. 
They abound in towering peaks, bristling ridges, and 
terrifying precipices. Their glacial cirques are girt 
with fantastically toothed and pinnacled walls. 

This is true of all granite ranges which are lofty 
enough to maintain glaciers. These are, in fact, the 
very characteristics of Alpine, Andean, Himalayan, 
Sierran, Alaskan, and Rocky Mountain summit land- 
scape. It is why granite mountains are the favorites 
of those daring climbers whose ambition is to equal 
established records and make new ones; and this in 
turn is why some mountain neighborhoods become so 
much more celebrated than others which are quite as 
fine, or finer — because, I mean, of the publicity given 
to this kind of mountain climbing, and of the unwar- 
ranted assumption that the mountains associated with 
these exploits necessarily excel others in sublimity. 
As a matter of fact, the accident of fashion has even 
more to do with the fame of mountains than of men. 

But by no means all granite mountains are lofty. 
The White Mountains, for example, which parallel our 
northeastern coast, and are far older than the Rockies 
and the Sierra, are a low granite range, with few of the 
characteristics of those mountains which lift their 
heads among the perpetual snows. On the contrary, 
they tend to rounded forested summits and knobby 
peaks. This results in part from a longer subjection 



GRANITE'S PART IN SCENERY 35 

of the rock surface to the eroding influence of successive 
frosts and rains than is the case with high ranges which 
are perpetually locked in frost. Besides, the ice sheets 
which planed off the northern part of the United States 
lopped away their highest parts. 

There are also millions of square miles of eroded 
granite which are not mountains at all. These tend 
to rolling surfaces. 

The scenic forms assumed by granite will be better 
appreciated when one understands how it enters land- 
scape. The principal one of many igneous rocks, it 
is liquefied under intense heat and afterward cooled 
under pressure. Much of the earth's crust was once 
underlaid by granites in a more or less fluid state. 
When terrific internal pressures caused the earth's 
crust to fold and make mountains, this liquefied gran- 
ite invaded the folds and pushed close up under the 
highest elevations. There it cooled. Thousands of 
centuries later, when erosion had worn away these 
mountain crests, there lay revealed the solid granite 
core which frost and glacier have since transformed 
into the bristling ramparts of to-day's landscape. 



II 

YOSEMITE, THE INCOMPARABLE 

YosEMiTE National Park, Middle Eastern California. 
Area, 1,125 Square Miles 

THE first emotion inspired by the sight of Yosem- 
ite is surprise. No previous preparation makes 
the mind ready for the actual revelation. The hard- 
est preliminary reading and the closest study of 
photographs, even familiarity with other mountains 
as lofty, or loftier, fail to dull one's first astonishment. 

Hard on the heels of astonishment comes realiza- 
tion of the park's supreme beauty. It is of its own 
kind, without comparison, as individual as that of the 
Grand Canyon or the Glacier National Park. No 
single visit will begin to reveal its sublimity; one 
must go away and return to look again with rested 
eyes. Its devotees grow in appreciative enjoyment 
with repeated summerings. Even John Muir, life stu- 
dent, interpreter, and apostle of the Sierra, confessed 
toward the close of his many years that the Valley's 
quality of loveliness continued to surprise him at each 
renewal. 

And lastly comes the higher emotion which is 

bom of knowledge. It is only when one reads in 

these inspired rocks the stirring story of their making 

36 



YOSEMITE, THE INCOMPARABLE 37 

that pleasure reaches its fulness. The added joy of 
the collector upon finding that the unsigned canvas, 
which he bought only for its beauty, is the lost work 
of a great master, and was associated with the romance 
of a famous past is here dupHcated. Written history 
never was more romantic nor more graphically told 
than that which Nature has inscribed upon the walls 
of these vast canyons, domes and monoliths in a lan- 
guage which man has learned to read. 



The Yosemite National Park lies on the western 
slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California, 
nearly east of San Francisco. The snowy crest of the 
Sierra, bellying irregularly eastward to a climax among 
the jagged granites and gale-swept glaciers of Mount 
Lyell, forms its eastern boundary. From this the park 
slopes rapidly thirty miles or more westward to the 
heart of the warm luxuriant zone of the giant sequoias. 
This slope includes in its eleven hundred and twenty- 
five square miles some of the highest scenic examples 
in the wide gamut of Sierra grandeur. It is impossible 
to enter it without exaltation of spirit, or describe it 
without superlative. 

A very large proportion of Yosemite's visitors see 
nothing more than the Valley, yet no consideration is 
tenable which conceives the Valley as other than a 
small part of the national park. The two are insepara- 
ble. One does not speak of knowing the Louvre who 



38 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

has seen only the Venus de Milo, or St. Mark's who has 
looked only upon its horses. 

Considered as a whole, the park is a sagging plain 
of solid granite, hung from Sierra's saw-toothed crest, 
broken into divides and transverse mountain ranges, 
punctured by volcanic summits, gashed and bitten by 
prehistoric glaciers, dotted near its summits with 
glacial lakes, furrowed by innumerable cascading 
streams which combine in singing rivers, which, in 
turn, furrow greater canyons, some of majestic depth 
and grandeur. It is a land of towering spires and am- 
bitious summits, serrated cirques, enormous isolated 
rock masses, rounded granite domes, polished granite 
pavements, lofty precipices, and long, shimmering 
waterfalls. 

Bare and gale-ridden near its crest, the park de- 
scends in thirty miles through all the zones and grada- 
tions of animal and vegetable life through which one 
would pass in travelling from the ice-bound shores of 
the Arctic Ocean the continent's length to Mariposa 
Grove. Its tree sequence tells the story. Above 
timber-line there are none but inch-high willows and 
flat, piney growths, mingled with tiny arctic flowers, 
which shrink in size with elevation; even the sheltered 
spots on Lyell's lofty summit have their colored lichens, 
and their almost microscopic bloom. At timber-line, 
low, wiry shrubs interweave their branches to defy 
the gales, merging lower down into a tangle of many 
stunted growths, from which spring twisted pines and 
contorted spruces, which the winds curve to leeward 



YOSEMITE, THE INCOMPARABLE 39 

or bend at sharp angles, or spread in full development 
as prostrate upon the ground as the mountain lion's 
skin upon the home floor of his slayer. 

Descending into the great area of the Canadian 
zone, with its thousand wild valleys, its shining lakes, 
its roaring creeks and plunging rivers, the zone of the 
angler, the hiker, and the camper-out, we enter forests 
of various pines, of silver fir, hemlock, aged hump- 
backed juniper, and the species of white pine which 
Californians wrongly call tamarack. 

This is the paradise of outdoor living; it almost 
never rains between June and October. The forests 
fill the valley floors, thinning rapidly as they climb the 
mountain slopes; they spot with pine green the broad, 
shining plateaus, rooting where they find the soil, 
leaving unclothed innumerable glistening areas of 
polished uncracked granite; a striking characteristic 
of Yosemite uplands. From an altitude of seven or 
eight thousand feet, the Canadian zone forests begin 
gradually to merge into the richer forests of the Transi- 
tion zone below. The towering sugar pine, the giant 
yellow pine, the Douglas fir, and n score of decidu- 
ous growths — live oaks, bays, poplars, dog\voods, 
maples — begin to appear and become more frequent 
with descent, until, two thousand feet or more below, 
they combine into the bright stupendous forests where, 
in specially favored groves, King Sequoia holds his 
royal court. 

Wild flowers, birds, and animals also run the 
gamut of the zones. Among the snows and alpine 



40 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

flowerets of the summits are found the ptarmigan 
and rosy finch of the Arctic circle, and in the summit 
cirques and on the shores of the glacial lakes whistles 
the mountain marmot. 

The richness and variety of wild flower life in 
all zones, each of its characteristic kind, astonishes 
the visitor new to the American wilderness. Every 
meadow is ablaze with gorgeous coloring, every copse 
and sunny hollow, river bank and rocky bottom, be- 
comes painted in turn the hue appropriate to the 
changing seasons. Now blues prevail in the kaleido- 
scopic display, now pinks, now reds, now yellows. 
Experience of other national parks will show that the 
Yosemite is no exception; all are gardens of wild 
flowers. 

The Yosemite and the Sequoia are, however, the 
exclusive possessors among the parks of a remarkably 
showy flowering plant, the brilliant, rare, snow-plant. 
So luring is the red pillar which the snow-plant lifts a 
foot or more above the shady mould, and so easily is 
it destroyed, that, to keep it from extinction, the gov- 
ernment fines covetous visitors for every flower picked. 

The birds are those of California — many, prolific, 
and songful. Ducks raise their summer broods fear- 
lessly on the lakes. Geese visit from their distant 
homes. Cranes and herons fish the streams. Every 
tree has its soloist, every forest its grand chorus. The 
glades resound with the tapping of woodpeckers. The 
whirr of startled wings accompanies passage through 
every wood. To one who has lingered iu the forests 



YOSEMITE, THE INCOMPARABLE 41 

to watch and to listen, it is hard to account for the 
wide-spread fable that the Yosemite is birdless. No 
doubt, happy talkative tourists, in companies and 
regiments, afoot and mounted, drive bird and beast 
alike to silent cover — and comment on the lifeless 
forests. "The whole range, from foothill to summit, 
is shaken into song every summer," wrote John Muir, 
to whom birds were the loved companions of a life- 
time of Sierra summers, "and, though low and thin in 
winter, the music never ceases." 

There are two birds which the unhurried traveller 
will soon know well. One is the big, noisy, gaudy 
Clark crow, whose swift flight and companionable 
squawk are familiar to all who tour the higher levels. 
The other is the friendly camp robber, who, with 
encouragement, not only will share your camp luncheon, 
but will gobble the lion's share. 

Of the many wild animals, ranging in size from 
the great, powerful, timid grizzly bear, now almost 
extinct here, whose Indian name, by the way, is yo- 
semite, to the tiny shrew of the lowlands, the most fre- 
quently seen are the black or brown bear, and the 
deer, both of which, as compared with their kind in 
neighborhoods where hunting is permitted, are unterri- 
fied if not friendly. Notwithstanding its able pro- 
tection, the Yosemite will need generations to recover 
from the hideous slaughter which, in a score or two of 
years, denuded America of her splendid heritage of 
wild animal life. 

Of the several carnivora, the coyote alone is occa- 



42 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

sionally seen by visitors. Wolves and mountain lions, 
prime enemies of the deer and mountain sheep, are 
hard to find, even when officially hunted in the winter 

with dogs trained for the purpose. 

f 

n 

The Yosemite Valley is the heart of the national 
park. Not only is it the natural entrance and abiding 
place, the living-room, so to speak, the central point 
from which all parts of the park are most comfortably 
accessible; it is also typical in some sense of the 
Sierra as a whole, and is easily the most beautiful 
valley in the world. 

It is difficult to analyze the quality of the Valley's 
beauty. There are, as Muir says, "many Yosemites" 
in the Sierra. The Hetch Hetchy Valley, in the north- 
em part of the park, which bears the same relation to 
the Tuolumne River that the Yosemite Valley bears 
to the Merced, is scarcely less in size, richness, and the 
height and magnificence of its carved walls. Scores 
of other valleys, similar except for size, abound north 
and south, which are, scientifically and in Muir's 
meaning, Yosemites; that is, they are pauses in their 
rivers' headlong rush, once lakes, dug by rushing 
waters, squared and polished by succeeding glaciers, 
chiselled and ornamented by the frosts and rains which 
preceded and followed the glaciers. Muir is right, for 
all these are Yosemites; but he is wrong, for there is 
only one Yosemite. 



YOSEMITE, THE INCOMPARABLE 43 

It is not the giant monoliths that establish the 
incomparable Valley's world supremacy; Hetch Hetchy, 
Tehipite, Kings, and others have their giants, too. It 
is not its towering, perpendicular, serrated walls; 
the Sierra has elsewhere, too, an overwhelming exhibit 
of titanic granite carvings. It is not its waterfalls, 
though these are the highest, by far, in the world, nor 
its broad, peaceful bottoms, nor its dramatic vistas, 
nor the cavernous depths of its tortuous tributary 
canyons. Its secret is selection and combination. 
Like all supremacy, Yosemite's hes in the inspired 
proportioning of carefully chosen elements. Herein 
is its real wonder, for the more carefully one analyzes 
the beauty of the Yosemite Valley, the more difficult 
it is to conceive its ensemble the chance of Nature's 
functioning rather than the master product of supreme 
artistry. 

Entrance to the Yosemite by train is from the 
west, by automobile from east and west both. From 
whatever direction, the Valley is the first objective, for 
the hotels are there. It is the Valley, then, which we 
must see first. Nature's artistic contrivance is ap- 
parent even in the entrance. The train-ride from the 
main line at Merced is a constant up-valley progress, 
from a hot, treeless plain to the heart of the great, 
cool forest. Expectation keeps pace. Changing to 
automobile at El Portal, one quickly enters the park. 
A few miles of forest and behold — the Gates of the 
Valley. El Capitan, huge, glistening, rises upon the 
left, 3,000 feet above the valley floor. At first sight 



44 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

its bulk almost appalls. Opposite upon the right 
Cathedral Rocks support the Bridal Veil Fall, shim- 
mering, filmy, a fairy thing. Between them, in the 
distance, lies the unknown. 

Progress up the valley makes constantly for cli- 
max. Seen presently broadside on. El Capitan bulks 
double, at least. Opposite, the valley bellies. Cathe- 
dral Rocks and the mediaeval towers known as Cathe- 
dral Spires, are enclosed in a bay, which culminates in 
the impressive needle known as Sentinel Rock — all 
richly Gothic. Meantime the broadened valley, an- 
other strong contrast in perfect key, delightfully 
alternates with forest and meadow, and through it the 
quiet Merced twists and doubles like a glistening snake. 
And then we come to the Three Brothers. 

Already some notion of preconception has pos- 
sessed the observer. It could not have been chance 
which set off the filmy Bridal Veil against El Capitan's 
bulk; which designed the Gothic climax of Sentinel 
Rock; which wondrously proportioned the consecutive 
masses of the Three Brothers; which made El Capitan, 
now looked back upon against a new background, a 
new and appropriate creation, a thing of brilliance and 
beauty instead of bulk, mighty of mass, powerful in 
shape and poise, yet mysteriously delicate and unreal. 
As we pass on with rapidly increasing excitement to 
the supreme climax at the Valley's head, where gather 
together Glacier Point, Yosemite Falls of unbelievable 
height and graciousness, the Royal Arches, manifestly 
a carving, the gulf-like entrances of Tenaya and the 




I-'roni ,1 pliiilDi^riiph by J. T. Boysen 

EL CAPITAX. SURVIVOR OF THE GLACIERS 
Looking eastward up the Vosemite \allcy. Half Dome is seen on the ri^ht horizon 



YOSEMITE, THE INCOMPARABLE 45 

Merced Canyons, and above all, and pervading all, 
the distinguished mysterious personality of Half 
Dome, presiding priest of this Cathedral of Beauty, 
again there steals over us the uneasy suspicion of su- 
preme design. How could Nature have happened 
upon the perfect composition, the flawless technique, 
the divine inspiration of this masterpiece of more than 
human art? Is it not, in fact, the master temple of 
the Master Architect? 

To appreciate the Valley we must consider cer- 
tain details. It is eight miles long, and from half a 
mile to a mile wide. Once prehistoric Lake Yosemite, 
its floor is as level as a ball field, and except for occa- 
sional meadows, grandly forested. The sinuous Mer- 
ced is forested to its edges in its upper reaches, but 
lower down occasionally wanders through broad, 
blooming opens. The rock walls are dark pearl-hued 
granite, dotted with pines wherever clefts or ledges 
exist capable of supporting them; even El Capitan 
carries its pine-tree half way up its smooth precipice. 
Frequently the walls are sheer; they look so every- 
where. The valley's altitude is 4,000 feet. The walls 
rise from 2,000 to 6,000 feet higher; the average is a 
little more than 3,000 feet above the valley floor; 
Sentinel Dome and Mount Watkins somewhat exceed 
4,000 feet; Half Dome nearly attains 5,000 feet; 
Cloud's Rest soars nearly 6,000 feet. 

Two large trench-like canyons enter the valley 
at its head, one on either side of Half Dome. Tenaya 
Canyon enters from the east in line with the valley, 



46 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

looking as if it were the Valley's upper reach. Merced 
Canyon enters from the south after curving around the 
east and south sides of Half Dome. Both are ex- 
tremely deep. Half Dome's 5,000 feet form one side 
of each canyon; Mount Watkin's 4,300 feet form the 
north side of Tenaya Canyon, Glacier Point's 3,200 
feet the west side of Merced Canyon. Both canyons 
are superbly wooded at their outlets, and lead rapidly 
up to timber-line. Both carry important trails from 
the Valley floor to the greater park above the rim. 

To this setting add the waterfalls and the scene 
is complete. They are the highest in the world. 
Each is markedly individualized; no two resemble 
each other. Yet, with the exception of the Vernal 
Fall, all have a common note; all are formed of com- 
paratively small streams dropping from great heights; 
all are wind-blown ribbons ending in clouds of mist. 
They are so distributed that one or more are visible 
from most parts of the Valley and its surrounding 
rim. More than any other feature, they differentiate 
and distinguish the Yosemite. 

The first of the falls encountered, Bridal Veil, is a 
perfect example of the valley t>pe. A small stream 
pouring over a perpendicular wall drops six hundred 
and twenty feet into a volvmie of mist. The mist, of 
course, is the bridal veil. How much of the water 
reaches the bottom as water is a matter of interesting 
speculation. This and the condensed mists reach the 
river through a delta of five small brooks. As a spec- 
tacle the Bridal Veil Fall is unsurpassed. The deli- 




/■''.">■ .; plwlof,T,iph by J. T. Boyscti 

HALF DOME. YOSEMITES HOODED MONK 

Rising nearly four thousand feet above the valley flcxir; the view is up Tenaya Canyon to the 

High Sierra 



YOSEMITE, THE INCOMPARABLE 47 

cacy of its beauty, even in the high water of early 
summer, is unequalled by any waterfall I have seen. 
A rainbow frequently gleams like a colored rosette in 
the massed chiffon of the bride's train. So pleasing 
are its proportions that it is difficult to believe the fall 
nearly four times the height of Niagara, 

The Ribbon Fall, directly opposite Bridal Veil, a 
little west of El Capitan, must be mentioned because 
for a while in early spring its sixteen hundred foot drop 
is a spectacle of remarkable grandeur. It is merely 
the run of a snowfield which disappears in June. 
Thereafter a dark perpendicular stain on the cliff 
marks its position. Another minor fall, this from the 
south rim, is that of Sentinel Creek. It is seen from 
the road at the right of Sentinel Rock, dropping five 
hundred feet in one leap of several which aggregate 
two thousand feet. 

Next in progress come Yosemite Falls, loftiest by 
far in the world, a spectacle of sublimity. These falls 
divide with Haff Dome the honors of the upper Valley. 
The tremendous plunge of the Upper Fall, and the 
magnificence of the two falls in apparent near continua- 
tion as seen from the principal points of elevation on 
the valley floor, form a spectacle of extraordinary dis- 
tinction. They vie with Yosemite's two great rocks, 
El Capitan and Half Dome, for leadership among the 
individual scenic features of the continent. 

The Upper Fall pours over the rim at a point 
nearly twenty-six hundred feet above the valley floor. 
Its sheer drop is fourteen hundred and thirty feet, the 



48 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

equal of nine Niagaras. Two-fifths of a mile south of 
its foot, the Lower Fall drops three hundred and twenty 
feet more. From the crest of the Upper Fall to the 
foot of the Lower Fall lacks a little of half a mile. 
From the foot of the Lower Fall, after foaming down 
the talus, Yosemite Creek, seeming a ridiculously small 
stream to have produced so monstrous a spectacle, 
slips quietly across a half mile of level valley to lose 
itself in the Merced. 

From the floods of late May when the thunder of 
falling water fills the valley and windows rattle a mile 
away, to the October drought when the slender ribbon 
is little more than mist, the Upper Yosemite Fall is a 
thing of many moods and infinite beauty. Seen from 
above and opposite at Glacier Point, sideways and more 
distantly from the summit of Cloud's Rest, straight 
on from the valley floor, upwards from the foot of the 
Lower Fall, upwards again from its own foot, and 
downwards from the overhanging brink toward which 
the creek idles carelessly to the very step-off of its 
fearful leap, the Fall never loses for a moment its 
power to amaze. It draws and holds the eye as the 
magnet does the iron. 

Looking up from below one is fascinated by the 
extreme leisureliness of its motion. The water does 
not seem to fall; it floats; a pebble dropped alongside 
surely would reach bottom in half the time. Speculat- 
ing upon this appearance, one guesses that the air re- 
tards the water's drop, but this idea is quickly dis- 
pelled by the observation that the solid inner body 



YOSEMITE, THE INCOMPARABLE 49 

drops no faster than the outer spray. It is long be- 
fore the wondering observer perceives that he is the 
victim of an illusion; that the water falls normally; 
that it appears to descend with less than natural speed 
only because of the extreme height of the fall, the eye 
naturally applying standards to which it has been 
accustomed in viewing falls of ordinary size. 

On windy days the Upper Fall swings from the 
brink like a pendulum of silver and mist. Back and 
forth it lashes like a horse's tail. The gusts lop off 
puffy clouds of mist which dissipate in air. Muir tells 
of powerful winter gales driving head on against the 
cliff, which break the fall in its middle and hold it in 
suspense. Once he saw the wind double the fall back 
over its own brink. Muir, by the way, once tried to 
pass behind the Upper Fall at its foot, but was nearly 
crushed. 

By contrast with the lofty temperamental Upper 
Fall, the Lower Fall appears a smug and steady pigmy. 
In such company, for both are always seen together, 
it is hard to realize that the Lower Fall is twice the 
height of Niagara. Comparing Yosemite's three most 
conspicuous features, these gigantic falls seem to ap- 
peal even more to the imagination than to the sense 
of beauty. El Capitan, on the other hand, suggests 
majesty, order, proportion, and power; it has its many 
devotees. Half Dome suggests mystery; to many 
it symbolizes worship. Of these three, Half Dome 
easily is the most popular. 

Three more will complete the Valley's list of nota- 



50 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

ble waterfalls. All of these lie up the Merced Canyon. 
Illilouette, three hundred and seventy feet in height, 
enters from the west, a frothing fall of great beauty, 
hard to see. Vernal and Nevada Falls carry the Mer- 
ced River over steep steps in its rapid progress from the 
upper levels to the valley floor. The only exception 
to the valley type, Vernal Fall, which some consider 
the most beautiful of all, and which certainly is the 
prettiest, is a curtain of water three hundred and seven- 
teen feet high, and of pleasing breadth. The Nevada 
Fall, three-fifths of a mile above, a majestic drop of 
nearly sLx hundred feet, shoots watery rockets from 
its brink. It is full-run, powerful, impressive, and 
highly individualized. With many it is the favorite 
waterfall of Yosemite. 

In sharp contrast with these valley scenes is the 
view from Glacier Point down into the Merced and 
Tenaya Canyons, and out over the magical park 
landscape to the snow-capped mountains of the High 
Sierra. Two trails lead from the valley up to Glacier 
Point, and high upon the precipice, three thousand 
feet above the valley floor, is a picturesque hotel; it 
is also reached by road. Here one may sit at ease on 
shady porches and overlook one of the most extended, 
varied and romantic views in the world of scenery. 
One may take dinner on this porch and have sunset 
served with dessert and the afterglow with coffee. 

Here again one is haunted by the suggestion of 
artistic intention, so happy is the composition of this 
extraordinary picture. The foreground is the dark. 



YOSEMITE, THE INCOMPARABLE 51 

tremendous gulf of Merced Canyon, relieved by the 
silver shimmer of Vernal and Nevada Falls. From 
this in middle distance rises, in the centre of the can- 
vas, the looming tremendous personality of Half 
Dome, here seen in profile strongly suggesting a monk 
with outstretched arms blessing the valley at close of 
day. Beyond stretches the horizon of famous, snowy, 
glacier-shrouded mountains, golden in sunset glow. 

HI 

Every summer many thousands of visitors gather 
in Yosemite. Most of them, of course, come tourist- 
fashion, to glimpse it all in a day or two or three. A 
few thousands come for long enough to taste most of 
it, or really to see a little. Fewer, but still increasingly 
many, are those who come to live a little with Yosemite; 
among these we find the lovers of nature, the poets, 
the seers, the dreamers, and the students. 

Living is very pleasant in the Yosemite. The 
freedom from storm during the long season, the dry 
warmth of the days and the coldness of the nights, the 
inspiration of the surroundings and the completeness 
of the equipment for the comfort of visitors make it 
extraordinary among mountain resorts. There is a 
hotel in the Valley, and another upon the rim at 
Glacier Point. There are three large hotel-camps in 
the Valley, where one may have hotel comforts under 
canvas at camp prices. Two of these hotel-camps 
possess swimming pools, dancing pavilions, tennis 



52 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

courts electrically lighted for night play, hot and cold- 
water tubs and showers, and excellent table service. 
One of the hotel-camps, the largest, provides evening 
lectures, song services, and a general atmosphere sug- 
gestive of Chatauqua. Still a third is for those who 
prefer quiet retirement and the tradition of old- 
fashioned camp life. 

Above the valley rim, besides the excellent hotel 
upon Glacier Point, there are at this writing hotel- 
camps equipped with many hotel comforts, including 
baths, at such outlying points as Merced Lake and 
Tenaya Lake; the former centring the mountain 
climbing and trout fishing of the stupendous region on 
the southwest slope of the park, and the latter the 
key to the entire magnificent region of the Tuolumne. 
These camps are reached by mountain trail, Tenaya 
Lake Camp also by motor road. The hotel-camp sys- 
tem is planned for wide extension as growing demand 
warrants. There are also hotels outside park limits 
on the south and west which connect with the park 
roads and trails. 

The roads, by the way, are fair. Three enter from 
the west, centring at Yosemite Village in the Valley; 
one from the south by way of the celebrated Mariposa 
Grove of giant sequoias; one from El Portal, terminus 
of the Yosemite Railway; and one from the north, 
by way of several smaller sequoia groves, connecting 
directly with the Tioga Road. 

Above the valley rim and north of it, the Tioga 
Road crosses the national park and emerges at Mono 



YOSEMITE, THE INCOMPARABLE 53 

Lake on the east, having crossed the Sierra over Tioga 
Pass on the park boundary. The Tioga Road, which 
was built in 1881, on the site of the Mono Trail, to 
connect a gold mine west of what has since become the 
national park with roads east of the Sierra, was pur- 
chased in 191 5 by patriotic lovers of the Yosemite and 
given to the Government. The mine having soon 
failed, the road had been impassable for many years. 
Repaired with government money it has become the 
principal highway of the park and the key to its future 
development. The increase in motor travel to the 
Yosemite from all parts of the country which began 
the summer following the Great War, has made this 
gift one of growing importance. It affords a new 
route across the Sierra. 

But hotels and hotel-camps, while accommodat- 
ing the great majority of visitors, by no means shelter 
all. Those who camp out under their own canvas are 
likely to be Yosemite's most appreciative devotees. 
The camping-out colony lives in riverside groves in 
the upper reaches of the Valley, the Government assign- 
ing locations without charge. Many families make 
permanent summer homes here, storing equipment 
between seasons in the village. Others hire equip- 
ment complete, from tents to salt-cellars, on the spot. 
Some who come to the hotels finish the season under 
hired canvas, and next season come with their own. 
An increasing number come in cars, which they keep 
in local garages or park near their canvas homes. 

Living is easy and not expensive in these camp 



54 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

homes. Mid-day temperatures are seasonable, and 
nights are always cool. As it does not rain, tents are 
concessions to habit; many prefer sleeping mider the 
trees. Markets in the village supply meats, vegetables, 
milk, bread, and groceries at prices regulated by Gov- 
ernment, and deliver them at your kitchen tent. 
Shops furnish all other reasonable needs. It is not 
camping out as commonly conceived; you are living 
at home on the banks of the Merced, under the morn- 
ing shadow of Half Dome, and within sight of Yosemite 
Falls. 

From these Valley homes one rides into the High 
Sierra on horses hired from the government conces- 
sioner, tours to the Tuolumne Meadows or the Mari- 
posa Grove by automobile, wanders long summer after- 
noons in the Valley, climbs the great rocks and domes, 
picnics by moonlight under the shimmering falls or 
beneath the shining tower of El Capitan, explores fa- 
mous fishing waters above the rim, and, on frivolous 
evenings, dances or looks at motion pictures at the 
greater hotel-camps. 

No wonder that camp homes in the Yosemite are 
growing in popularity. 

IV 

The trail traveller finds the trails the best in the 
country, and as good as the best in the world; they are 
the models for the national system. Competent guides, 
horses, supplies, and equipment are easy to hire at 
regulated prices in the village. 



YOSEMITE, THE INCOMPARABLE 55 

As for the field, there is none nobler or more varied 
in the world. There are dozens of divides, scores of 
towering, snow-splashed peaks, hundreds of noble val- 
leys and shining lakes, thousands of cascading streams, 
great and small, from whose depths fighting trout rise 
to the cast fly. There are passes to be crossed which 
carry one through concentric cirques of toothed gran- 
ite to ridges from which the High Sierra spreads before 
the eye a frothing sea of snowy peaks. 

Such a trip is that through Tuolumne Meadows 
up Lyell Canyon to its headwaters, over the Sierra at 
Donohue Pass, and up into the birth chambers of 
rivers among the summit glaciers of Lyell and JNIcClure 
— a never-to-be-forgotten journey, which may be con- 
tinued, if one has time and equipment, down the John 
Muir Trail to Mount Whitney and the Sequoia Na- 
tional Park. Or one may return to the park by way 
of Banner Peak and Thousand Island Lake, a wonder 
spot, and thence north over Parker and ]\Iono Passes; 
trips like these produce views as magnificent as the 
land possesses. 

Space does not permit even the suggestion of the 
possibilities to the trail traveller of this wonderland 
above the rim. It is the summer playground for a 
nation. 

Second in magnificence among the park valleys is 
Hetch Hetchy, the Yosemite of the north. Both are 
broad, flowered and forested levels between lofty gran- 
ite walls. Both are accented by gigantic rock per- 
sonalities. Kolana Rock, which guards Hetch Hetchy 



S6 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

at its western gateway as El Capitan guards Yosemite, 
must be ranked in the same class. Were there no 
Yosemite Valley, Hetch Hetchy, though it lacks the 
distinction which gives Yosemite Valley its world- 
wide fame, would be much better known than it now 
is — a statement also true about other features of the 
national park. 

Hetch Hetchy is now being dammed below Ko- 
lana Rock to supply water for San Francisco. The 
dam will be hidden from common observation, and the 
timber lands to be flooded will be cut so as to avoid 
the unsightliness usual with artificial reservoirs in 
forested areas. The reservoir will cover one of the 
most beautiful bottoms in America. It will destroy 
forests of luxuriance. It will replace these with a long 
sinuous lake, from which sheer Yosemite-like granite 
walls will rise abruptly two or three thousand feet. 
There will be places where the edges are forested. 
Down into this lake from the high rim will cascade 
many roaring streams. 

The long fight in California, in the press of the 
whole country, and finally in Congress, between the 
advocates of the Hetch Hetchy reservoir and the de- 
fenders of the scenic wilderness is one of the stirring 
episodes in the history of our national parks. At this 
writing, time enough has not yet passed to heal the 
wounds of battle, but at least we may look calmly at 
what remains. One consideration, at least, affords a 
little comfort. Hetch Hetchy was once, in late pre- 
historic times, a natural lake of great nobility. The 




I : :i: ,; pliolograplt by J. T. Boysen 

THE CLIMAX OF YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK. 

Mount Lycll and its placier from Lyi-ll Fork 




THE GREATEST WATERWHEEL OF THE TUOLUMNE 
It is fifty feet in height and seventy-five feet ions; Yosemite National Park 



YOSEMITE, THE INCOMPARABLE 57 

remains of Nature's dam, not far from the site of man's, 
are plain to the geologist's eye. It is possible that, 
with care in building the dam and clearing out the 
trees to be submerged, this restoration of one of Na- 
ture's noble features of the past may not work out so 
inappropriately as once we feared. 

The Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne, through 
which the river descends from the level of the Tuo- 
lumne Meadows almost five thousand feet to the Hetch 
Hetchy Valley, possesses real Yosemite grandeur. 
Much of this enormous drop occurs within a couple of 
amazing miles west of the Cahfornia Falls. Here the 
river slips down sharply tilted granite slopes at breath- 
less speed, breaking into cascades and plunging over 
waterfalls at frequent intervals. It is a stupendous 
spectacle which few but the hardiest mountaineers 
saw previous to 19 18, so steep and difficult was the 
going. During that season a trail was opened which 
makes accessible to all one of the most extraordinary 
examples of plunging water in the world. 

The climax of this spectacle is the Waterwheels. 
Granite obstructions in the bed of the steeply tilted 
river throw solid arcs of frothing water fifty feet in 
air. They occur near together, singly and in groups. 



The fine camping country south of the Yosemite 
Valley also ofifers its sensation. At its most southern 
point, the park accomplishes its forest climax in the 



58 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

Mariposa Grove. This group of giant sequoias (Se- 
quoia washingtoniana) ranks next, in the number and 
magnificence of its trees, to the Giant Forest of the 
Sequoia National Park and the General Grant grove. 

The largest tree of the Mariposa Grove is the 
Grizzly Giant, which has a diameter of twenty-nine 
feet, a circumference of sixty-four feet, and a height 
of two hundred and four feet. One may guess its age 
from three thousand to thirty-two hundred years. It 
is the third in size and age of living sequoias; General 
Sherman, the largest and oldest, has a diameter of 
thirty-six and a half feet, and General Grant a diam- 
eter of thirty-five feet, and neither of these, in all 
probability, has attained the age of four thousand 
years. General Sherman grows in the Sequoia Na- 
tional Park, seventy miles or more south of Yosemite; 
General Grant has a little national park of its own a 
few miles west of Sequoia. 

The interested explorer of the Yosemite has so 
far enjoyed a wonderfully varied sequence of sur- 
prises. The incomparable valley with its towering 
monoliths and extraordinary waterfalls, the High 
Sierra with its glaciers, serrated cirques and sea of 
snowy peaks, the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne 
with its cascades, rushing river and frothing Water- 
wheels, are but the headhners of a long catalogue of 
the unexpected and extraordinary. It only remains, to 
complete this new tale of the Arabian Nights, to make 
one's first visit to the sequoias of Mariposa Grove. 
The first sight of the calm tremendous columns which 



YOSEMITE, THE INCOMPARABLE 59 

support the lofty roof of this forest temple provokes a 
new sensation. Unconsciously the visitor removes his 
hat and speaks his praise in whispers. 

The sequoias are considered at greater length in 
the chapter describing the Sequoia National Park, 
which was created especially to conserve and exhibit 
more than a million of these most interesting of trees. 
It will suffice here to say that their enormous stems 
are purplish red, that their fine, lace-like foliage hangs 
in splendid heavy plumes, that their enormous limbs 
crook at right angles, the lowest from a hundred to a 
hundred and fifty feet above the ground, and that all 
other trees, even the gigantic sugar pine and Douglas 
fir, are dwarfed in their presence. Several of the 
sequoias of the Mariposa grove approach three hun- 
dred feet in height. The road passes through the trunk 

of one. 

VI 

The human history of the Yosemite is quickly 
told. The country north of the Valley was known 
from early times by explorers and trappers who used 
the old Mono Indian Trail, now the Tioga Road, which 
crossed the divide over Mono Pass. But, though the 
trail approached within a very few miles of the north 
rim of the Yosemite Valley, the valley was not discov- 
ered till 1 85 1, when Captain Boling of the Mariposa 
Battalion, a volunteer organization for the protection 
of settlers, entered it from the west in pursuit of In- 
dians who had raided mining settlements in the foot- 
hiUs. 



6o THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

These savages were known as the Yosemite or 
Grizzly Bear Indians. Tenaya, their chief, met their 
pursuers on the uplands and besought them to come 
no further. But Captain Boling pushed on through 
the heavy snows, and on March 21, entered the valley, 
which proved to be the Indians' final stronghold. 
Their villages, however, were deserted. 

The original inhabitants of the Valley were called 
the Ahwahneechees, the Indian name for the Valley 
being Ahwahnee, meaning a deep grassy canyon. The 
Ahwahneechees, previous to Captain BoHng's expedi- 
tion, had been decimated by war and disease. The 
new tribe, the Yosemites, or Grizzly Bears, was made 
up of their remainder, with Monos and Piutes added. 

Captain Boling's report of the beauty of the val- 
ley having been questioned, he returned during the 
summer to prove his assertions to a few doubters. 
Nevertheless, there were no further visitors until 1853, 
when Robert B. Stinson of Mariposa led in a hunt- 
ing-party. Two years later J. M. Hutchings, who was 
engaged in writing up the beauties of California for 
the California Magazine, brought the first tourists; 
the second, a party of sixteen, followed later the same 
year. 

Pleasure travel to the Yosemite VaUey may be 
said to have commenced with 1856, the year the first 
house was built. This house was enlarged in 1858 by 
Hite and Beardsley and used for a hotel. Sullivan 
and Cushman secured it for a debt the following year, 
and it was operated in turn by Peck, Longhurst, and 



YOSEMITE, THE INCOMPARABLE 6i 

Hutchings until 187 1. Meantime J. C. Lamon set- 
tled in i860, the first actual resident of the valley, an 
honor which he did not share with others for four 
years. 

The fame of the valley spread over the country 
and in 1864 Congress granted to the State of Cali- 
fornia "the Cleft or Gorge of the Granite Peak of 
the Sierra Nevada Mountains" known as the Yo- 
semite Valley, with the understanding that all income 
derived from it should be spent for improving the 
reservation or building a road to it. The Mariposa 
Big Tree Grove was also granted at the same time. 
California carefully fulfilled her charge. The Yo- 
semite Valley became world-famous, and in 1890 the 
Yosemite National Park was created. 



VII 

The Yosemite's geological history is much more 
thrilling. Everyone who sees it asks. How did Nature 
make the Yosemite Valley? Was it spht by earth 
convulsions or scooped by glacier? Few ask what 
part was played by the gentle Merced. 

The question of Yosemite's making has busied 
geologists from Professor Whitney of the University 
of California, who first studied the problem, down to 
F. E. Matthes, of the United States Geological Survey, 
whose recent exhaustive studies have furnished the 
final solution. Professor Whitney maintained that 
glaciers never had entered the valley; he did not even 



62 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

consider water erosion. At one time he held that the 
valley was simply a cleft or rent in the earth's crust. 
At another time he imagined it formed by the sudden 
dropping back of a large block in the course of the 
convulsions that resulted in the uplift of the Sierra 
Nevada. Galen Clark, following him, carried on his 
idea of an origin by force. Instead of the walls being 
cleft apart, however, he imagined the explosion of 
close-set domes of molten rock the riving power, but 
conceived that ice and water erosion finished the job. 
With Clarence King the theory of glacial origin began 
its long career. John Muir carried this theory to its 
extreme. 

Since the period of Muir's speculations, the tre- 
mendous facts concerning the part played by erosion 
in the modification of the earth's surface strata have 
been developed. Beginning with W. H. Turner, a 
group of Yosemite students under the modern influence 
worked upon the theory of the stream-cut valley modi- 
fied by glaciers. The United States Geological Sur- 
vey then entered the field, and Matthes's minute in- 
vestigations followed; the manuscript of his mono- 
graph has helped me reconstruct the dramatic past. 

The fact is that the Yosemite Valley was cut from 
the solid granite nearly to its present depth by the 
Merced River; before the glaciers arrived, the river- 
cut valley was twenty-four hundred feet deep opposite 
El Capitan, and three thousand feet deep opposite 
Eagle Peak. The valley was then V-shaped, and the 
present waterfalls were cascades; those which are now 



YOSEMITE, THE INCOMPARABLE 63 

the Yosemite Falls were eighteen hundred feet deep, 
and those of Sentinel Creek were two thousand feet 
deep. All this in pre-glacial times. 

Later on the glaciers of several successive epochs 
greatly widened the valley, and measurably deepened 
it, making it U-shaped. The cascades then became 
waterfalls. 

But none will see the Yosemite Valley and its 
cavernous tributary canyons without sympathizing 
a little with the early geologists. It is difhcult to 
imagine a gash so tremendous cut into solid granite 
by anything short of force. One can think of it gouged 
by massive glaciers, but to imagine it cut by water is 
at first inconceivable. 

To comprehend it we must first consider two 
geological facts. The first is that no dawdling mod- 
em Merced cut this chasm, but a torrent considerably 
bigger; and that this roarmg river swept at tremendous 
speed down a sharply tilted bed, which it gouged 
deeper and deeper by friction of the enormous masses 
of sand and granite fragments which it carried down 
from the High Sierra. The second geological fact is 
that the Merced and Tenaya torrents sand-papered 
the deepening beds of these canyons day and night 
for several million years; which, when we remember 
the mile-deep canyons which the Colorado River and 
its confluents cut through a thousand or more miles 
of Utah and Arizona, is not beyond human credence, 
if not conception. 

But, objects the sceptical, the Merced couldn't 



64 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

keep always tilted; in time it would cut down to a 
level and slow up; then the sand and gravel it was 
carrying would settle, and the stream stop its digging. 
Again, if the stream-cut valley theory is correct, why 
isn't every Sierra canyon a Yosemite? 

Let us look for the answer in the Sierra's history. 

The present Sierra Nevada is not the first moun- 
tain chain upon its site. The granite which underlay 
the folds of the first Sierra are still disclosed in the 
walls of the Yosemite Valley. The granites which 
underlay the second and modem Sierra are seen in the 
towering heights of the crest. 

Once these mountains overran a large part of 
our present far west. They formed a level and very 
broad and high plateau; or, more accurately, they 
tended to form such a plateau, but never quite suc- 
ceeded, because its central section kept caving and 
sinking in some of its parts as fast as it lifted in others. 
Finally, in the course, perhaps, of some millions of 
years, the entire central section settled several thou- 
sand feet lower than its eastern and western edges; 
these edges it left standing steep and high. This 
sunken part is the Great Basin of to-day. The re- 
maining eastern edge is the Wasatch Mountains; the 
remaining western edge is the Sierra. That is why 
the Sierra's eastern front rises so precipitously from 
the deserts of the Great Basin, while its western side 
slopes gradually toward the Pacific. 

But other crust changes accompanied the sinking 
of the Great Basin. The principal one was the rise, 



YOSEMITE, THE INCOMPARABLE 65 

in a series of upward movements, of the remaining 
crest of the Sierra. These movements may have corre- 
sponded with the sinkings of the Great Basin; both 
were due to tremendous internal readjustments. And 
of course, whenever the Sierra crest lifted, it tilted 
more sharply the whole granite block of which it was 
the eastern edge. These successive tiltings are what 
kept the Merced and Tenaya channels always so 
steeply inclined that, for millions of years, the streams 
remained torrents swift enough to keep on sand- 
papering their beds. 

The first of these tiltings occurred in that far age 
which geologists call the Cretaceous. It was incon- 
siderable, but enough to hasten the speed of the streams 
and establish general outlines for all time. About the 
middle of the Tertiary Period volcanic eruptions 
changed all things. Nearly all the valleys except the 
Yosemite became filled with lava. Even the crest of 
the range was buried a thousand feet in one place. 
This was followed by a rise of the Sierra Crest a couple 
of thousand feet, and of course a much sharper tilting 
of the western slopes. The Merced and Tenaya Rivers 
must have rushed very fast indeed during the many 
thousand years that followed. 

The most conservative estimate of the duration 
of the Tertiary Period is four or five milHon years, and 
until its close volcanic eruptions continued to fill 
valleys with lava, and the Great Basin kept settling, 
and the crest of the Sierra went on rising; and with 
each lifting of the crest, the tilt of the rivers sharpened 



66 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

and the speed of the torrents hastened. The canyon 
deepened during this time from seven hundred to a 
thousand feet. The Yosemite was then a mountain 
valley whose sloping sides were crossed by cascades. 

Then, about the beginning of the Quaternary 
Period, came the biggest convulsion of all. The crest 
of the Sierra was hoisted, according to Matthes's cal- 
culations, as much as eight thousand feet higher in 
this one series of movements, and the whole Sierra 
block was again tilted, this time, of course, enormously. 

For thousands of centuries following, the torrents 
from Lyell's and McClure's melting snows must have 
descended at a speed which tore boulders from their 
anchorages, ground rocks into sand, and savagely 
scraped and scooped the river beds. Armed with sharp 
hard-cutting tools ripped from the granite cirques of 
Sierra's crest, these mad rivers must have scratched 
and hewn deep and fast. And because certain val- 
leys, including the Yosemite, were never filled with 
lava like the rest, these grew ever deeper with the 
centuries. 

The great crust movement of the Quaternary 
Period was not the last, by any means, though it was 
the last of great size. There were many small ones 
later. Several even have occurred within historic 
times. On March 26, 1872, a sudden earth movement 
left an escarpment twenty-five feet high at the foot of 
the range in Owens Valley. The village of Lone Pine 
was levelled by the accompanying earthquake. John 
Muir, who was in the Yosemite Valley at the time, de- 



YOSEMITE, THE INCOMPARABLE 67 

scribes in eloquent phrase the accompanying earth- 
quake which was felt there. A small movement, 
doubtless of similar origin, started the San Francisco 
fire in 1906. 

Conditions created by the great Quaternary tilt- 
ing deepened the valley from eighteen hundred feet 
at its lower end to twenty-four hundred feet at its 
upper end. It established what must have been an 
unusually interesting and impressive landscape, which 
suggested the modern aspect, but required completion 
by the glaciers. 

Geologically speaking, the glaciers were recent. 
There were several ice invasions, produced probably 
by the same changes in climate which occasioned the 
advances of the continental ice sheet east of the 
Rockies. Matthes describes them as similar to the 
northern glaciers of the Canadian Rockies of to-day. 
For unknown thousands of years the Valley was filled 
by a glacier three or four thousand feet thick, and the 
surrounding country was covered with tributary ice- 
fields. Only Cloud's Rest, Half Dome, Sentinel Dome, 
and the crown of El Capitan emerged above this ice. 
The glacier greatly widened and considerably deepened 
the valley, turned its slopes into perpendiculars, and 
changed its side cascades into waterfalls. When it 
receded it left Yosemite Valley almost completed. 

There followed a long period of conditions not 
unlike those of to-day. Frosts chipped and scaled the 
granite surfaces, and rains carried away the fragments. 
The valley bloomed with forests and wild flowers. 



68 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

Then came other glaciers and other intervening periods. 
The last glacier advanced only to the head of Bridal 
Veil Meadow. When it melted it left a lake which 
filled the Valley from wall to wall, three hundred feet 
deep. Finally the lake filled up with soil, brought 
down by the streams, and made the floor of the present 
valley. 

The centuries since have been a period of decora- 
tion and enrichment. Frost and rain have done their 
perfect work. The incomparable valley is complete. 



m 

THE PROPOSED ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK 

Including the Present Sequoia National Park, West 
Central California. Area, i,6oo Square Miles 



WHERE the lava billows of the Cascade Moun- 
tains end in northern California the granite 
knobs of the Sierra begin. Sharply differentiated in 
appearance and nature a few miles further in either 
direction, here their terminals overlap, and so nearly 
merge that the southern end of the one and the northern 
beginning of the other are not easily distinguished by 
the untrained eye. 

But southward the Sierra Nevada, the snowy 
saw-toothed range of the Spaniards, the Sierra of 
modern American phrase, rapidly acquires the bulk 
and towering height, the craggy cirqued summits and 
the snowy shoulders which have made it celebrated. 
Gathering grandeur as it sweeps southward close to 
the western boundary of California, its western slopes 
slashed deep with canyons, its granite peaks and domes 
pushing ever higher above the scattering forests of its 
middle zones, its eastern ramparts dropping in preci- 
pices to the desert, it valiantly guards its sunny state 
against the passage of eastern highways, and forces 

hard engineering problems upon the builders of trans- 

6g 



70 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

continental railroads. Where it becomes the eastern 
boundary of the Yosemite National Park it breaks 
into climaxes of magnificence. 

From this point on the Sierra broadens and bulks. 
It throws out spurs, multiplies paralleling ranges, heaps 
peaks and ridges between gulf-like canyons which 
carry roaring waters through their forested trenches. 
Pushing ever higher above timber-line, it breaks into 
large lake-bearing cirques, sometimes cirque within 
cirque, walled in silvery granite, hung with garlands 
of snow and dripping with shining glaciers. Ninety 
miles south of Yosemite it culminates in a close group- 
ing of snow-daubed, glacier-gouged, lightning-splin- 
tered peaks, one of which. Mount Whitney, highest 
summit in the United States, raises his head just a 
little above his gigantic neighbors. 

South of Whitney, the Sierra subsides rapidly and 
merges into the high plateaus and minor ranges of 
southern California. 

Seventy-five miles of the crest of this titanic 
range at the climax of its magnificence, sixty-five miles 
of it north of Whitney and ten miles of it south, con- 
stitute the western boundary of an area of sixteen 
hundred square miles which Congress is considering 
setting apart under the title of the Roosevelt National 
Park; a region so particularly characterized by rug- 
gedness, power, and unified purpose that it is eminently 
fitted to serve as the nation's memorial to Theodore 
Roosevelt. Besides its stupendous mountains, it in- 
cludes the wildest and most exuberant forested can- 



THE ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK 71 

yons, and the most luxuriant groves in the United 
States, for its boundaries will enclose also the present 
Sequoia National Park, in which a million trunks of 
the famous Sequoia Washingtoniana cluster around the 
General Sherman Tree, believed to be the biggest and 
oldest living thing in all the world. 

Wide though its range from bleak crest to warm 
forest, every part of this region is a necessary part of 
its whole. Nature's subtle finger has so knitted each 
succeeding zone into the fabric of its neighbors that it 
would be a vandal's hand which should arbitrarily cut 
tlie picture short of 'the full completion of its perfect 
composition. It is one of Nature's masterpieces, 
through whose extremest contrasts runs the common 
note of supremacy. 

Whether or not, then. Congress insures its per- 
petuity and unified development, we can consider it 
scenically only as a whole. 

Similar in kind to the Yosemite National Park, 
Roosevelt is far ruggeder and more masterful. It will 
be the national park of superlatives. Yet each of these 
similar areas is a completed unit of striking individ- 
uality. Yosemite, taking its note from its incompara- 
ble Valley, never will be equalled for sheer beauty; 
Roosevelt knows no peer for exuberance and grandeur. 
Yosemite will remain Mecca for the tourist; Roose- 
velt will draw into its forest of giant trees, and upon 
its shoulders of chiselled granite, thousands of campers- 
out and lovers of the high trail. 

Joined near the crest of the Sierra by the John 



72 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

Muir Trail, California's memorial to her own prophet 
of the out-of-doors, these two national parks, so alike 
and yet so different, each striking surely its own note 
of sublimity, are, in a very real sense, parts of one still 
greater whole; the marriage of beauty and strength. 

II 

The region is roughly pear-shaped. A straight 
line drawn from Pine Creek Pass at its northern end 
to Sheep Mountain on the southern base line meas- 
ures sixty-eight miles; the park is thirty-six miles 
wide at its widest, just north of Mount Whitney. Its 
eastern boundary, the crest of the Sierra, divides many 
notable peaks. From north to south we pass, as we 
travel the John Muir Trail, Mount Humphreys, 13,972 
feet; Mount Darwin, 13,841 feet; Mount Winchell, 
13,749 feet; Split Mountain, 14,051 feet; Striped 
Mountain, 13,160 feet; Mount Baxter, 13,118 feet; 
Junction Peak, 13,903 feet; Mount Tyndall, 14,025 
feet; and Mount Whitney, 14,501 feet; supporting 
Whitney on the south is Mount Langley, 14,042 feet; 
all these connected by splintered peaks, granite ledges, 
and mountain masses scarcely less in altitude. 

Between the bristling crest of this snow-daubed 
eastern boundary and the park's western boundary, 
thousands of feet lower where the forests begin, the 
region roughly divides into parallel zones. That which 
immediately adjoins the crest upon its west side, a 
strip ten miles or more in width, is known to its 



THE ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK 73 

devotees as the High Sierra. It is a country of tre- 
mendous jagged peaks, of intermediate pinnacled walls, 
of enormous cirques holding remnants of once mighty 
glaciers, of great fields of sun-cupped snow, of tur- 
quoise lakes resting in chains upon enormous granite 
steps; the whole gleaming like chased silver in the 
noon sun; a magical land of a thousand Matterhorns, 
whose trails lead from temple to temple, so mighty of 
size and noble of design that no mind less than the 
Creator's could ever have conceived them. 

The High Sierra has been celebrated for many 
years in the fast-growing brotherhood of American 
mountain climbers, east as well as west, many of whom 
proclaim its marked superiority to all parts of the 
Swiss Alps except the amazing neighborhood of Mont 
Blanc. With the multiplication of trails and the build- 
ing of shelters for the comfort of the inexperienced, 
the veriest amateur of city business life will find in 
these mountains of perpetual sunshine a satisfaction 
which is only for the seasoned mountaineer abroad. 

The zone adjoining the High Sierra upon its west 
is one of far wider range of pleasure. Subsiding rapidly 
in elevation, it becomes a knobbed and bouldered land 
which includes timber-line and the thin forests of wind- 
twisted pines which contend with the granite for foot- 
hold. It is crossed westward by many lesser ranges 
buttressing the High Sierra; from these cross ranges 
many loftier peaks arise, and between them roar the 
rivers whose thousands of contributing streams drain 
the snow-fields and the glaciers of the white heights. 



74 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

Finally, paralleling the western boundary, is the 
narrow zone in which this region meets and merges 
with the greater forests and the meadows beyond the 
boundary. Here, in the southwestern corner, is the 
marvellous warm forest in which trees of many kinds 
attain their maximum of size and proportion, and which 
encloses a mUlion sequoia trees, including the greatest 
and oldest embodiments of the principle of life. This 
extraordinary forest was reserved in 1890 under the 
title of the Sequoia National Park. At the same time 
was created the General Grant National Park, a reser- 
vation of four square miles of similar forest, virtually 
a part of it, but separated because of an intervening 
area of privately owned lands. 

Thus does this region run the gamut of supremacy 
from the High Sierra upon its east, to the Giant Forest 
upon its west. 

Of no less distinction are its waters. Innumera- 
ble lakelets of the High Sierra, born of the snows, over- 
flow in tiny streams which combine into roaring, 
frothing creeks. These in turn, augmented by the 
drainage of the lofty tumbled divides, combine into 
powerful little rivers. Four river systems originate 
in this region. 

Far in the north a lake, more than eleven thou- 
sand feet high, lying at the western foot of Mount 
Goddard, begins the South Fork of the San Joaquin 
River, which drains the park's northern area. Inci- 
dentally, it has cut a canyon of romantic beauty, up 
which the John Muir Trail finds its way into the park. 



THE ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK 75 

The northern middle area of the park is drained 
by the Middle and South Forks of the Kings River, 
which find their origins in perhaps forty miles of Sierra's 
crest. The drainage basins of these splendid streams 
cover nearly half of the park's total area, and include 
some of the biggest, as well as some of the wildest 
and most beautiful mountain scenery in the world. 
Bounded upon their west by an arc of snowy moun- 
tains, separated by the gigantic Monarch Divide, 
flanked by twisted ranges and towering peaks, they 
cascade westward through meadows of rank grasses 
and vividly colored wild-flowers, alternating with 
steep-sided gorges and canyons of sublimity. Drop- 
ping thousands of feet within a few miles, they abound 
in cascades and majestic falls, between which swift 
rapids alternate with reaches of stiller, but never still, 
waters which are the homes of cut-throat trout. Each 
of these rivers has its canyon of distinguished magnifi- 
cence. The Tehipite Valley of the Middle Fork and 
the Kings River Canyon of the South Fork are destined 
to world celebrity. 

The southwestern area of the park is drained by 
five forks of the beautiful Kaweah River. These 
streams originate on the north in the divide of the 
South Fork of the Kings River, and on the east in a 
conspicuously fine range known as the Great Western 
Divide. They wind through the wooded valleys of 
the Sequoia National Park. Upon their banks grow 
the monsters of the American forest. 

The southern area is drained by the Kern River, 



76 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

into which flow the waters of Mount Whitney and his 
giant neighbors. The Kern Canyon is one of Roose- 
velt's noblest expressions. Flowing southward be- 
tween precipitous walls three thousand feet and more 
in height, flanked upon the east by monsters of the 
High Sierra, and on the west by the splendid eleva- 
tions of the Great Western Divide, it is a valley su- 
premely fitted for the highest reahzation of the region^s 
gifts of enjoyment. From camps beside its trout- 
haunted waters, it is a matter of no difficulty for those 
equipped for the trail to reach the summit of Whitney, 
on the one hand, and the Giant Forest on the other. 

Near the southern boundary of the park. Golden 
Trout Creek enters the Kern. It originates at the 
very crest of the Sierra, which it follows closely for 
many miles before swinging westward to its outlet. 
In this stream is found a trout which appears, when 
fresh caught, as though carved from gold. Popularly 
it is known as the golden trout; its scientific name is 
Salmo Rooseveltii. Originally, no doubt, the color 
evolved from the peculiar golden hues of the rocks 
through which its waters flow. The golden trout has 
been transplanted into other Sierra streams, in some 
of which, notably the open upper waters of the Middle 
Fork of the Kings, it has thrived and maintained its 
vivid hue. In sheltered waters it has apparently dis- 
appeared, a fact which may merely mean that its 
color has changed with environment. 



THE ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK 77 

in 

There are many gateways, two by road, the rest 
by trail. For years to come, as in the past, the great 
majority of visitors will enter through the Giant For- 
est of the Sequoia National Park and through the Gen- 
eral Grant National Park. The traveller by rail will 
find motor stages at Visalia for the run into the Giant 
Forest, and at Fresno for the General Grant National 
Park. The motorist will find good roads into both 
from CaHfomia's elaborate highway system. In both 
the traveller will find excellent hotel camps, and, if his 
purpose is to live awhile under his private canvas, 
public camp grounds convenient to stores and equipped 
with water supply and even electric lights. Under the 
gigantic pines, firs, and ancient sequoias of these ex- 
traordinary forests, increasing thousands spend sum- 
mer weeks and months. 

From these centres the lovers of the sublime take 
saddle-horses and pack-trains, or, if they are hikers, 
burros to carry their equipment, and follow the trails 
to Kern Canyon, or the summit of Whitney, or the 
Kings River Canyon, or the Tehipite Valley, or the 
John Muir Trail upon the Sierra's crest. Many are 
the trip combinations, the choice of which depends 
upon the time and the strenuousness of the traveller. 
Camping-out on trail in Roosevelt is an experience 
which demands repetition. Sure of clear weather, the 
traveller does not bother with tents, but snuggles at 
night in a sleeping-bag under a roof of spreading pine. 



78 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

But it is possible to equip for the trail elsewhere. 
The principal point upon the north is the Yosemite 
National Park, where one may provide himself with 
horses and supplies for a journey of any desired dura- 
tion. Starting in the Yosemite Valley, and leaving 
the park near the carved cirques of Mount Lyell, the 
traveller will find the intervening miles of the John 
Muir Trail a panorama of magnificence. Thousand 
Island Lake, reflecting the glorious pyramid of Banner 
Peak, the Devil's Postpile, a group of basaltic columns, 
far finer than Ireland's celebrated Giant's Causeway, 
the Mono Valley, with its ancient volcano split down 
through the middle so that all may see its vent and 
spreading crater, are merely the more striking features 
of a progress of spectacles to the north entrance of 
Roosevelt Park; this is at the junction of the South 
Fork of the San Joaquin River and Piute Creek. The 
principal eastern gateway is Kearsarge Pass, on the 
crest of the Sierra a few miles north of Mount Whitney. 
The trail ascends from Independence, where one also 
may comfortably outfit. 

These four are, at this writing, the principal en- 
trance gates, each opening from points at which parties 
may be sure of securing horses, equipment, and guides. 
But several other trails enter from the east, south, 
southwest, and west sides. All of these in time will 
become, with development, well travelled trails into 
the heart of the great wilderness. 



THE ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK 79 

IV 

Any description of the glories of the John Muir 
Trail from its entrance into the park to its climax 
upon the summit of Mount Whitney far passes the 
limits of a chapter. In time it will inspire a literature. 

Approaching from Yosemite through the canyon of 
the San Joaquin, the traveller swings around the north 
side of Mount Goddard, crosses gorgeous Muir Pass, 
and enters the fringe of cirques and lakes which borders 
the western edge of Sierra's crest from end to end. 
Through this he winds his way southward, skirting 
lakes, crossing snowfields, encircling templed cirques, 
plunging into canyons, climbing divides, rounding 
gigantic peaks, surprising views of sublimity, mount- 
ing ever higher until he stands upon the shoulders of 
Mount Whitney. Dismounting here, he scrambles up 
the few hundred feet of stiff climb which places him 
on the summit, from which he looks out north, west, 
and south over the most diversified high mountain 
landscape in America, and eastward over the Sierra 
foothills to Death Valley, lowest land in the United 
States. 

No thrilling Alpine feat is the ascent of our loftiest 
summit. But those who want to measure human 
strength and skill in terms of perpendicular granite 
may find among Whitney's neighbors peaks which 
will present harder problems than those offered abroad, 
peaks which themselves well may become as celebrated 
in future years. 



8o THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

The John Muir Trail is destined to a fame and a 
use perhaps many times as great as those men thought 
who conceived it as a memorial to a lover of the trail, 
and of all that that implies. It will play a distin- 
guished part in the education of the nation in the love 
of mountains. It will win artists to a phase of the 
sublime in America which they have overlooked. It 
will bring students to the class-rooms where Nature 
displays her most tremendous exhibits. 

Nevertheless, Roosevelt's lower levels will draw 
many times as many devotees as will the High Sierra; 
and these visitors will stay longer. It is the valleys 
and the canyons which will prove the greatest lure, for 
here one may camp leisurely and in entire comfort, and 
thence make what trips he chooses into the regions of 
the peaks and the cirques. 

There are literally thousands of canyons and of 
many kinds. Besides the Kern Canyon there are two 
which must rank with Yosemite. In the summer of 
191 6 I travelled the length of the park, as far as the 
Giant Forest, with a party led by Director Stephen T. 
Mather, of the National Park Service, then Assistant 
to the Secretary of the Interior, and was powerfully 
impressed with the scenic qualities of the Tehipite 
Valley, and the Kings River Canyon, at that tkne 
little known. 

Time will not dim my memory of Tehipite Dome, 
the august valley and the leaping, singing river which 
it overlooks. Well short of the Yosemite Valley in 
the kind of beauty that plunges the observer into 



THE ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK 8i 

silence, the Tehipite Valley far excels it in bigness, 
power, and majesty. Lookout Point on the north rim, 
a couple of miles south of the Dome, gave us our first 
sensation. Three thousand feet above the river, it 
offered by far the grandest valley view I have looked 
upon, for the rim view into Yosemite by comparison 
is not so grand as it is beautiful. 

The canyon revealed itself to the east as far as 
Mount Woodworth, its lofty diversified walls lifting 
precipitously from the heavy forests of the floor and 
sides, and yielding to still greater heights above. 
Enormous cliffs abutted, Yosemitelike, at intervals. 
South of us, directly across the canyon, rose the strenu- 
ous heights of the Monarch Divide, Mount Harring- 
ton, towering a thousand feet higher above the valley 
floor than Clouds Rest above the Yosemite. Down 
the slopes of the Monarch Divide, seemingly from its 
turreted summits, cascaded many frothing streams. 
The Eagle Peaks, Blue Canyon Falls, Silver Spur, 
the Gorge of Despair, Lost Canyon — these were some 
of the romantic and appropriate titles we found on 
the Geological Survey map. 

And, close at hand, opposite Mount Harrington 
and just across Crown Creek Canyon, rose mighty 
Tehipite. We stood level with its rounded ghstening 
dome. The Tehipite Dome is a true Yosemite feature. 
It compares in height and prominence with El Capitan. 
In fact, it stands higher above the valley floor and 
occupies a similar position at the valley's western gate. 
It is not so massive as El Capitan, and therefore not 



82 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

so impressive; but it is superb. It is better compared 
with Half Dome, though again perhaps not so im- 
pressive. But it has its own august personaKty, as 
notably so as either of these world-famed rocks; and, 
if it stood in the Yosemite, would share with them the 
incomparable valley's highest honors. 

Descending to the floor, the whole aspect of the 
valley changed. Looking up, Tehipite Dome, now 
outlined against the sky, and the neighboring abrupt 
castellated walls, towered more hugely than ever. 
We did not need the contour map to know that some 
of these heights exceeded Yosemite's. The sky-line 
was fantastically carved into spires and domes, a 
counterpart in gigantic miniature of the Great Sierra 
of which it was the valley climax. The Yosemite 
measure of sublimity, perhaps, lacked, but in its place 
was a more rugged grandeur, a certain suggestion of 
vastness and power that I have not seen elsewhere. 

This impression was strengthened by the floor 
itself, which contains no suggestion whatever of Yo- 
semite's exquisiteness. Instead, it offers rugged spa- 
ciousness. In place of Yosemite's peaceful woods and 
meadows, here were tangled giant-studded thickets 
and mountainous masses of enormous broken talus. 
Instead of the quiet winding Merced, here was a surging, 
smashing, frothing, cascading, roaring torrent, several 
times its volume, which filled the valley with its 
turbulence. 

Once step foot on the valley floor and all thought 
of comparison with Yosemite vanishes forever. This 



^i 




roiH a pliolograph hy Ucrberl \\ . Gleason 

TEHIPITE DOME, GUARDIAN ROCK OF THE TEHIPITE VALLEY 
It rises abruptly more than three thousand feet; proposed Roosevelt National Park 



THE ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK 83 

is a different thing altogether, but a thing in its own 
way no less superlative. The keynote of the Tehipite 
Valley is wild exuberance. It thrills where Yosemite 
enervates. Yet its temperature is quite as mild. 

The Middle Fork contains more trout than any 
other stream I have fished. We found them in pools 
and riflBes everywhere; no water was too white to 
get a rise. In the long, greenish-white borders of fast 
rapids they floated continually into view. In five 
minutes' watching I could count a dozen or more such 
appearances within a few feet of water. They ran 
from eight to fourteen inches. No doubt larger ones 
lay below. So I got great fun by picking my particular 
trout and casting specially for him. Stop your fly's 
motion and the pursuing fish instantly stops, backs, 
swims round the lure in a tour of examination, and 
disappears. Start it moving and he instantly reappears 
from the white depth, where, no doubt, he has been 
cautiously watching. A pause and a swift start often 
tempted to a strike. 

These rainbows of the torrents are hard fighters. 
And many of them, if ungently handled, availed of 
swift currents to thresh themselves free. 

You must fish a river to appreciate it. Standing 
on its edges, leaping from rock to rock, slipping waist 
deep at times, wading recklessly to reach some pool 
or eddy of special promise, searching the rapids, peer- 
ing under the alders, testing the pools; that's the way 
to make friends with a river. You study its moods 
and its ways as those of a mettlesome horse. 



84 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

And after a while its spirit seeps through and finds 
yours. Its personahty unveils. A sweet friendliness 
unites you, a sense of mutual understanding. There 
follows the completest detachment that I know. 
Years and the worries disappear. You and the river 
dream away the uimoted hours. 

Passing on from the Tehipite Valley to the Kings 
River Canyon, the approach to Granite Pass was 
nothing short of magnificent. We crossed a superb 
cirque studded with lakelets; we could see the pass 
ahead of us on a fine snow-crowned bench. We 
ascended the bench and found ourselves, not in the 
pass, but in the entrance to still another cirque, also 
lake-studded, a loftier, nobler cirque encircling the 
one below. Ahead of us upon another lofty bench 
surely was the pass. Those inspiring snow-daubed 
heights whose serrated edges cut sharply into the sky 
certainly marked the supreme summit. Our winding 
trail up steep, rocky ascents pointed true; an hour's 
toil would carry us over. But the hour passed and 
the crossing of the shelf disclosed, not the glowing 
valley of the South Fork across the pass, but still a 
vast-er, nobler cirque above, sublime in Arctic glory ! 

How the vast glaciers that cut these titanic carv- 
ings must have swirled among these huge concentric 
walls, pouring over this shelf and that, piling together 
around these uplifting granite peaks, concentrating 
combined effort upon this unyielding mass and that, 
and, beaten back, pouring down the tortuous main 
channel with rendings and tearings unimaginable ! 




l-rom a photograftli by Herbert W . Gteason 

EAST MDETTE FROx\r A FOREST OK FOXTAIL FIXES 
This is one of the great granite peaks of the proposed Roosevelt Xational Park 



THE ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK 85 

Granite Pass is astonishing! We saw no less 
than four of these vast concentric cirques, through 
three of which we passed. And the Geological Sur- 
vey map discloses a tributary basin adjoining which 
enclosed a group of large volcanic lakes, and doubtless 
other vast cirque-like chambers. 

We took photographs, but knew them vain. 

A long, dusty descent of Copper Creek brought 
us, near day's end, into the exquisite valley of the 
South Fork of the Kings River, the Kings River 
Canyon. 

Still another Yosemite ! 

It is not so easy to differentiate the two canyons 
of the Kings. They are similar and yet very different. 
Perhaps the difference lies chiefly in degree. Both lie 
east and west, with enormous rocky bluffs rising on 
either side of rivers of quite extraordinary beauty. 
Both present carved and castellated walls of excep- 
tional boldness of design. Both are heavily and 
magnificently wooded, the forests reaching up sharp 
slopes on either side. Both possess to a marked degree 
the quality that lifts them above the average of even 
the Sierra's glacial valleys. 

But the outlines here seem to be softer, the valley 
floor broader, the river less turbulent. If the keynote 
of the Tehipite Valley is wild exuberance, that of the 
Kings River Canyon is wild beauty. The one excites, 
the other lulls. The one shares with Yosemite the 
distinction of extraordinary outline, the other shares 
with Yosemite the distinction of extraordinary charm. 



86 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

There are few nobler spots than the junction of 
Copper Creek with the Kings. The Grand Sentinel 
is seldom surpassed. It fails of the personality of 
El Capitan, Half Dome, and Tehipite, but it only 
just fails. If they did not exist, it would become the 
most celebrated rock in the Sierra, at least. The view 
up the canyon from this spot has few equals. The 
view down the canyon is not often excelled. When 
the day of the Kings River Canyon dawns, it will 
dawn brilliantly. 

V 

The western slopes of the Pacific ranges, from 
the Canadian border southward to the desert, carry 
the most luxuriant forest in the United States. The 
immense stands of yellow pine and Douglas fir of the 
far north merge into the sugar pines and giant sequoias 
of the south in practically an unbroken belt which, on 
Sierra's slopes, lies on the middle levels between the 
low productive plains of the west and the towering 
heights of the east. The Sequoia National Park and 
its little neighbor, the General Grant National Park, 
enclose areas of remarkable fertility in which trees, 
shrubs, and wild flowers reach their greatest develop- 
ment. The million sequoia trees which grow here 
are a very small part, numerically, of this amazing 
forest. 

These slopes are rich with the soil of thousands of 
years of accumulations. They are warmed in summer 
by mild Pacific winds heated in their passage across 



THE ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK 87 

the lowlands, and blanketed in winter by many feet 
of soft snow. They are damp with countless springs 
and streams sheltered under heavy canopies of foliage. 
In altitude they range from two thousand feet at the 
bottom of Kaweah's canyon, as it emerges from the 
park, to eight thousand feet in the east, with moun- 
tains rising three or four thousand feet higher. 
It is a tumbled land of ridges and canyons, but its 
slopes are easy and its outline gracious. Oases of 
luscious meadows dot the forests. 

This is the Court of King Sequoia. Here assem- 
ble in everlasting attendance millions of his nobles, a 
statelier gathering than ever bowed the knee before 
human potentate. Erect, majestic, clothed in togas 
of perpetual green, their heads bared to the heavens, 
stand rank upon rank, mile upon mile, the noblest 
personalities of the earth. 

Chief among the courtiers of the king is the sugar- 
pine, towering here his full two hundred feet, straight 
as a ruler, his stem at times eight feet in thickness, 
scarcely tapering to the heavy limbs of his high crown. 
Largest and most magnificent of the Pacific pines, 
reaching sometimes six hundred years of age, the 
greater trunks clear themselves of branches a hundred 
feet from the ground, and the bark develops long dark 
plates of armor. So marked is his distinguished per- 
sonality that, once seen, he never can be mistaken for 
another. 

Next in rank and scarcely less in majesty is the 
massive white fir, rising at times even to two hundred 



^S THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

feet, his sometimes six-foot trunk conspicuously rough, 
dark brown in color, deeply furrowed with ashen gray. 
His pale yellow-green crown is mysteriously tinged 
with white. His limit of age is three hundred and 
fifty years. 

Last of the ranking trio is the western yellow pine, 
a warrior clad in plates of russet armor. A hundred 
and sixty feet in natural height, here he sometimes 
towers even with his fellow knights. He guards the 
outer precincts of the court, his cap of yellow-green, 
his branching arms resting upon his sides. 

These are the great nobles, but with them are 
millions of lesser courtiers, the incense cedar from whose 
buttressed, tapering trunks spring countless branches 
tipped with fan-like plumes; many lesser conifers; the 
splendid Pacific birches in picturesque pose; the oaks 
of many kinds far different from their eastern cousins. 
And among the feet of these courtiers of higher degree 
crowd millions upon millions of flowering shrubs, 
massing often in soHd phalanxes, disputing passage 
with the deer. 

All mingle together, great and small. The con- 
ifers, in the king's honor, flaunt from stem and greater 
branch long fluttering ribbons of pale green moss. 
Thousands of squirrels chatter in the branches. Mil- 
lions of birds make music. It is a gala day. 

Enter the King. 

The King of Trees is of royal Hneage. The pa- 
tient searchers in the rocks of old have traced his an- 
cestry unknown millions of years, back to the forests 



THE ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK 89 

of the Cretaceous Period. His was Viking stock from 
arctic zones where trees can live no more. 

To-day he Hnks all human history. The identical 
tree around which gather thousands of human courtiers 
every year emerged, a seedling, while Nebuchadnezzar 
besieged Jerusalem. No man knows how old his pred- 
ecessors were when finally they sank into death — 
mighty fall ! But John Muir counted four thousand 
rings in the trunk of one fallen giant, who must have 
lived while Pharaoh still held captive the Children of 
Israel. 

The General Sherman Tree of the Giant Forest, 
the oldest living thing to-day, so far as I have been 
able to ascertain, probably has seen thirty-six hundred 
years. It is evident to the unlearned observer that, 
while mature, he is long short of the turn of life. A 
thousand years from now he still may be the earth's 
biggest and oldest living thing; how much beyond 
that none may venture to predict. 

Picture, now, the Giant Forest, largest of the sev- 
eral sequoia groves in the Sequoia National Park. 
You have entered, say, in the dusk of the night be- 
fore, and after breakfast wander planless among the 
trees. On every side rise the huge pines and firs, 
their dark columns springing from the tangled brush 
to support the cathedral roof above. Here an enor- 
mous purplish-red column draws and holds your as- 
tonished eye. It is a gigantic thing in comparison 
with its monster neighbors; it glows among their dull 
columns; it is clean and spotless amid their moss- 



90 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

hung trunks; branchless, it disappears among their 
upper fohage, hinting at steeple heights above. Yet 
your guide tells you that this tree is small; that its 
diameter is less than twenty feet; that in age it is a 
youngster of only two thousand years! Wait, he 
tells you, till you see the General Sherman Tree's 
thirty-six and a half feet of diameter; wait till you see 
the hundreds, yes thousands, which surpass this 
infant ! 

But you heed him not, for you see another back 
among those sugar pines! Yes, and there's another. 
And there on the left are two or three in a clump 1 
Back in the dim cathedral aisles are reddish glows 
which must mean still others. Your heart is beating 
with a strange emotion. You look up at the enormous 
limbs bent at right angles, at the canopy of feathery 
foliage hanging in ten thousand huge plumes. You 
cry aloud for the sheer joy of this great thing, and 
plunge into the forest's heart. 

The Giant Forest contains several thousand se- 
quoia trees of large size, and many young trees. You 
see these small ones on every hand, erect, sharply 
pointed, giving in every line a vivid impression of 
quivering, boimding life. Later on, as they emerge 
above the roof of the forest, for some of them are more 
than three hundred feet high, they lose their sharp 
ambitious tops; they become gracefully rounded. 
Springing from seed less than a quarter of an inch in 
diameter, they tend, like their cousins the redwoods, 
to grow in groups, and these groups tend to grow in 




Ii.im ,1 fli'>l,i,;rap/i hy 5. //. Willard 

BULL FROG LAKE, PROPOSED ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK 
Along the crest of the Sierra extends a region of lofty cirques and innumerable glacier-fed lakelets 




UNDER A GL\NT SEQUOLA 

From right to left: Benjamin Ide Wheeler, William Loeb, Jr., Nicholas Murray Butler, John Muir, 

Surgeon-General Rixey, U. S. N., Theodore Roosevelt, then President, 

George C. Pardee, and William H. Moody 



I 



1 



THE ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK 91 

groves. But there are scattering individuals in every 
grove, and many small isolated groves in the Sierra. 
The Giant Forest is the largest grove of greatest trees. 
The General Grant Grove, in a small national park of 
its own, near by, is the second grove in size and impor- 
tance; its central figure is the General Grant Tree, 
second in size and age to the General Sherman Tree. 

The dimensions of the greatest trees are aston- 
ishing. Glance at this table: 



NAME 


HEIGHT 
FEET 


DIAUETER 
FEET 


Giant Forest Grove 
General Sherman 


279.9 

270 

291 

292 

260 

264 
255 


36. 5 

28 
27 
30 

35 
29 


Abraham Lincoln 


William McKinley 


Mum Grove 
Dalton 


Garfield Grove 
California 


General Grant Grove 
General Grant 


George Washington 





The Theodore Roosevelt Tree, which has not been 
measured at this writing, is one of the noblest of all, 
perfect in form and color, abounding in the glory of 
young maturity. 

To help realization at home of the majesty of the 
General Sherman Tree, mark its base diameter, thirty- 
six and a half feet, plainly against the side of some 
building, preferably a church with a steeple and neigh- 



92 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

boring trees; then measure two hundred and eighty 
feet, its height, upon the ground at right angles to the 
church; then stand on that spot and, facing the church, 
imagine the trunk rising, tapering sKghtly, against the 
building's side and the sky above it; then slowly lift 
your eyes until you are looking up into the sky at an 
angle of forty-five degrees, this to fix its height were it 
growing in front of the church. 

Imagine its lowest branches, each far thicker than 
the trunks of eastern elms and oaks, pushing horizon- 
tally out at a height above ground of a hundred and 
fifty feet, which is higher than the tops of most of the 
full-grown trees of our eastern forests. Imagine these 
limbs bent horizontally at right angles, like huge elbows, 
as though holding its green mantle close about its 
form. Imagine the upper branches nearly bare, 
shattered perhaps by lightning. And imagine its 
crown of foliage, dark yellowish-green, hanging in 
enormous graceful plumes. 

This is the King of Trees. 






IV 

THE HEART OF THE ROCKIES 

TflE Rocky Mountain National Park, North Central 
Colorado. Area, 398 Square Miles 

I 

THE Sierra Nevada Mountains of California and 
the Cascade Range of California, Oregon, and 
Washington have each three national parks which 
fully represent their kind and quality. The great cen- 
tral system of the United States, the Rocky Moun- 
tains, which also possess three national parks, are rep- 
resented in kind by only one, for Yellowstone is an 
exceptional volcanic interlude, and Glacier is the 
chance upheaval of shales and limestones from a period 
antedating the granite Rockies by many millions of 
years; neither in any sense exhibits the nature and 
scenic quaHty of the backbone of our continent. 

This is one of the reasons for the extraordinary 
distinction of the reservation appropriately called the 
Rocky Mountain National Park, namely that it is 
the only true example of the continental mountain 
system in the catalogue of our national parks. It is 
well, therefore, to lay the foundations for a sound 
comprehension of its differentiating features. 

The Rocky Mountains, which began to rise at the 
close of the Cretaceous Period at a rate so slow that 
geologists think they are making a pace to-day as 

93 



94 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

rapid as their maximum, extend from the plateau of 
New Mexico northwesterly until they merge into the 
mountains of eastern Alaska. In the United States 
physiographers consider them in two groups, the 
Northern Rockies and the Southern Rockies, the point 
of division being the elevated Wyoming Basin. There 
are numerous ranges, known, like the Wasatch Moun- 
tains, by different names, which nevertheless are con- 
sistent parts of the Rocky Mountain System. 

The Rockies attain their most imposing mass and 
magnificence in their southern group, culminating in 
Colorado. So stupendous is this heaping together of 
granitic masses that in Colorado alone are found forty- 
two of the fifty-five named peaks in the United States 
which attain the altitude of fourteen thousand feet. 
Of the others, twelve are in the Sierra of California, 
and one, Mount Rainier, in Washington. Mount El- 
bert, in Colorado, our second highest peak, rises within 
eighty-two feet of the height of California's Mount 
Whitney, our first in rank; Colorado's Mount Massive 
attains an altitude only four feet less than Washing- 
ton's Mount Rainier, which ranks third. In point of 
mass, one seventh of Colorado rises above ten thou- 
sand feet of altitude. The state contains three hun- 
dred and fifty peaks above eleven thousand feet of 
altitude, two hundred and twenty peaks above twelve 
thousand feet, and a hundred and fifty peaks above 
thirteen thousand feet; besides the forty-two named 
peaks which exceed fourteen thousand feet, there are 
at least three others which are unnamed. 



THE HEART OF THE ROCKIES 95 

Geologists call the Rockies young, by which they 
mean anything, say, from five to twenty million years. 
They are more or less contemporary with the Sierra. 
Like the Sierra, the mountains we see to-day are not 
the first; several times their ranges have uplifted upon 
wrecks of former ranges, which had yielded to the as- 
saults of frost and rain. Before they first appeared, 
parts of the Eastern Appalachians had paralleled our 
eastern sea coast for many million years. The Age of 
Mammals had well dawned before they became a 
feature in a landscape which previously had been a 
mid-continental sea. 

n 

The Front Range, carrying the continental divide, 
is a gnarled and jagged rampart of snow-splashed 
granite facing the eastern plains, from which its grim 
summits may be seen for many miles. Standing out 
before it like captains in front of gray ranks at parade 
rise three conspicuous mountains, Longs Peak, fifty 
miles northwest of Denver, Mount Evans, west of 
Denver, and Pikes Peak, seventy miles to the south. 
Longs Peak is directly connected with the continental 
divide by a series of jagged cliffs. Mount Evans is 
farther away. Pikes Peak stands sentinel-like seventy- 
five miles east of the range, a gigantic monadnock, 
remainder and reminder of a former range long ages 
worn away. 

Though many massive mountains of greater alti- 
tude lie farther west, the Front Range for many rea- 



96 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

sons is representative of the Rockies' noblest. To 
represent them fully, the national park should include 
the three sentinel peaks and their neighborhoods, and 
it is earnestly hoped that the day will come when 
Congress will recognize this need. At this writing 
only the section of greatest variety and magnificence, 
the nearly four hundred square miles of which Longs 
Peak is the climax, has been thus entitled. In fact, 
even this was unfortunately curtailed in the making, 
the straight southern boundary having been arbitrarily 
drawn through the range at a point of sublimity, 
throwing out of the park the St. Vrain Glaciers which 
form one of the region's wildest and noblest spectacles, 
and Arapaho Peak and its glaciers which in several 
respects constitute a climax in Rocky Mountain 
scenery. 

Thus carelessly cropped, despoiled of the complete- 
ness which Nature meant it to possess, nevertheless the 
Rocky Mountain National Park is a reservation of 
distinguished charm and beauty. It straddles the 
continental divide, which bisects it lengthwise, north 
and south. The western slopes rise gently to the di- 
vide; at the divide, the eastern front drops in a preci- 
pice several thousand feet deep, out of which frosts, 
rains, glaciers and streams have gouged gigantic gulfs 
and granite-bound vales and canyons, whose inter- 
vening cliffs are battlemented walls and monoHths. 

As if these features were not enough to differ- 
entiate this national park from any other, Nature has 
provided still another element of popularity and dis- 




From a photoi^r.iph hy Wisu\i'l Brothers 



E.STES PARK PLATEAU, LOOKING EAST 

Showing the villaRC and the foothills, which are remnants of a former great range now almost 
washeil awa>- by erosion; Rocky Mountain National Park 




From J pholo^rjf,!, hy Wis-ual! Brothers 

FRONT RANGE OF THE ROCKIES FROM RIERSTADT LAKE 
From riKht to left: Flattop Mountain. Tyndall Glacier. Hallett Peak, Otis Peak, Andrews Glacier 



THE HEART OF THE ROCKIES 97 

tinction. East of this splendid rampart spreads a 
broad area of rolling plateau, carpeted with wild flowers, 
edged and dotted with luxuriant groves of pine, spruce, 
fir, and aspen, and diversified with hills and craggy- 
mountains, carved rock walls, long forest-grown mo- 
raines and picturesque ravines; a stream-watered, 
lake-dotted summer and winter pleasure paradise of 
great size, bounded on the north and west by snow- 
spattered monsters, and on the east and south by 
craggy wooded foothills, only less in size, and no less 
in beauty than the leviathans of the main range. 
Here is summer living room enough for several hundred 
thousand sojourners from whose comfortable camps 
and hotels the wild heart of the Rockies may be vis- 
ited afoot or on horseback between early breakfast 
and late supper at home. 

This plateau has been knowTi to summer visitors 
for many years under the titles of several settlements; 
Moraine Park, Horseshoe Park, and Longs Peak, each 
had its hotels long before the national park was created; 
Estes Park and Allen's Park on the east side, and 
Grand Lake on the west side lie just outside the park 
boundaries, purposely excluded because of their con- 
siderable areas of privately owned land. Estes Park, 
the principal village and the distributing centre of all 
incoming routes from the east, is the Eastern Gate- 
way; Grand Lake is the Western Gateway. 

And still there is another distinction, one which 
will probably always hold for Rocky Mountain its 
present great lead in popularity. That is its position. 



98 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

nearer to the middle of the country than other great 
national parks, and its accessibility from large centres 
of population. Denver, which claims with some jus- 
tice the title of Gateway to the National Parks, mean- 
ing of course the eastern gateway to the western parks, 
is within thirty hours by rail from Chicago and St. 
Louis, through one or other of which most travellers 
from the east find it convenient to reach the west. 
It is similarly conveniently located for touring motor- 
ists, with whom all the national parks are becoming 
ever more popular. From Denver several railroads 
lead to east-side towns, from which the park is reached 
by motor stages through the foothills, and a motor 
stage line runs directly from Denver to Estes Park, 
paralleling the range. The west side is reached through 
Granby. 

Ill 

Entry to the park by any route is dramatic. If 
the visitor comes the all-motor way through Ward he 
picks up the range at Arapaho Peak, and follows it 
closely for miles. If he comes by any of the rail 
routes, his motor stage emerges from the foothills upon 
a sudden spectacle of magnificence — the snowy range, 
its highest summits crowned with cloud, looming upon 
the horizon across the peaceful plateau. By any 
route the appearance of the range begins a panorama 
of ever-changing beauty and inspiration, whose prog- 
ress will outlive many a summer's stay. 

Having settled himself in one of the hotels or 



THE HEART OF THE ROCKIES 99 

camps of the east-side plateau, the visitor faces the 
choice between two practical ways of enjoying himself. 
He may, as the majority seem to prefer, spend his weeks 
in the simple recreations familiar in our eastern hill 
and country resorts; he may motor a little, walk a 
little, fish a little in the Big Thompson and its tribu- 
taries, read and botanize a little in the meadows and 
groves, golf a little on the excellent courses, climb a 
little on the lesser mountains, and dance or play bridge 
in hotel parlors at night. Or else he may avail him- 
self of the extraordinary opportunity which Nature 
offers him in the mountains which spring from his 
comfortable plateau, the opportunity of entering into 
Nature's very workshop and of studying, with her 
for his teacher, the inner secrets and the mighty exam- 
ples of creation. 

In all our national parks I have wondered at the 
contentment of the multitude with the less when the 
greater, and such a greater, was there for the taking. 
But I ceased to criticize the so-called popular point of 
view when I realized that its principal cause was igno- 
rance of the wealth within grasp rather than deliberate 
choice of the more commonplace; instead, I write 
this book, hoping that it may help the cause of the 
greater pleasure. Especially is the Rocky Mountain 
National Park the land of opportunity because of its 
accessibility, and of the ease with which its inmost 
sanctuaries may be entered, examined, and appre- 
ciated. The story is disclosed at every step. In fact 
the revelation begins in the foothills on the way in 



loo THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

from the railroad, for the red iron-stained cliffs seen 
upon their eastern edges are remainders of former 
Rocky Mountains which disappeared by erosion mil- 
lions of years ago. The foothills themselves are rem- 
nants of mountains which once were much loftier than 
now, and the picturesque canyon of the Big Thomp- 
son, through which it may have been your good for- 
tune to enter the park, is the stream-cut outlet of a 
lake or group of lakes which once covered much of the 
national park plateau. 

Summer life on the plateau is as effective as a 
tonic. The altitude varies from seven to nine thou- 
sand feet; Rocky Mountain's valley bottoms are 
higher than the summits of many peaks of celebrity 
elsewhere. On every hand stretch miles of tumbled 
meadows and craggy cliffs. Many are the excellent 
roads, upon which cluster, at intervals of miles, groups 
of hotels and camps. Here one may choose his own 
fashion of living, for these hostelries range from the 
most formal and luxurious hotel to the simplest collec- 
tion of tents or log cabins around a central log dining 
structure. Some of these camps are picturesque, the 
growth of years from the original log hut. Some are 
equipped with modern comforts; others are as primi- 
tive as their beginnings. All the larger resorts have 
stables of riding horses, for riding is the fashion even 
with those who do not venture into the mountains. 

Or, one may camp out in the good old-fashioned 
way, and fry his own morning bacon over his fire of 
sticks. 



THE HEART OF THE ROCKIES loi 

Wherever one lives, however one lives, in this broad 
tableland, he is under the spell of the range. The call 
of the mountains is ever present. Riding, walking, 
motoring, fishing, golfing, sitting under the trees with 
a book, continually he lifts his eyes to their calm heights. 
Unconsciously he throws them the first morning glance. 
Instinctively he gazes long upon their gleaming moon- 
lit summits before turning in at night. In time they 
possess his spirit. They calm him, exalt him, ennoble 
him. Unconsciously he comes to know them in all 
their myriad moods. Cold and stern before sunrise, 
brilliant and vivid in mid-morning, soft and restful 
toward evening, gorgeously colored at sunset, angry, 
at times terrifying, in storm, their fascination never 
weakens, their beauty changes but it does not lessen. 

Mountains of the height of these live in constant 
communion with the sky. Mummy Mountain in the 
north and Longs Peak in the south continually gather 
handfuls of fleecy cloud. A dozen times a day a 
mist appears in the blue, as if entangled while passing 
the towering summit. A few moments later it is a 
tiny cloud; then, while you watch, it thickens and 
spreads and hides the peak. Ten minutes later, per- 
haps, it dissipates as rapidly as it gathered, leaving 
the granite photographed against the blue. Or it 
may broaden and settle till it covers a vast acreage of 
sky and drops a brief shower in near-by valleys, while 
meadows half a mile away are steeped in sunshine. 
Then, in a twinkling, all is clear again. Sometimes, 
when the clearing comes, the summit is white with 



I02 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

snow. And sometimes, standing upon a high peak 
in a blaze of sunshine from a cleared sky, one may 
look down for a few moments upon the top of one of 
these settled clouds, knowing that it is sprinkling the 
hidden valley. 

The charm of the mountains from below may 
satisfy many, but sooner or later temptation is sure to 
beset. The desire comes to see close up those mon- 
sters of mystery. Many, including most women, 
ignorant of rewards, refuse to venture because they 
fear hardship. "I can never climb mountains in this 
rarefied air," pleads one, and in most cases this is true; 
it is important that persons unused to the higher alti- 
tudes be temperate and discreet. But the lungs and 
muscles of a well-trained mountain horse are always 
obtainable, and the least practice will teach the un- 
accustomed rider that all he has to do is to sit his 
saddle limply and leave everything else to the horse. 
It is my proud boast that I can climb any mountain, 
no matter how high and difficult, up which my horse 
can carry me. 

And so, at last and inevitably, we ascend into the 
mountains. 

IV 

The mountains within the park fall naturally in 
two groupings. The Front Range cuts the southern 
boundary midway and runs north to Longs Peak, 
where it swings westerly and carries the continental 
divide out of the park at its northwestern corner. 



THE HEART OF THE ROCKIES 103 

The Mummy Range occupies the park's entire north 
end. The two are joined by a ridge 11,500 feet in 
altitude, over which the Fall River Road is building 
to connect the east and the west sides of the park. 

The lesser of these two, the Mummy Range, is a 
mountain group of distinguished beauty. Its climax 
is an arc of gray monsters, Ypsilon Mountain, 13,507 
feet. Mount Fairchild, 13,502 feet, Hagues Peak, 
13,562 feet, and Mount Dunraven, 12,326 feet; these 
gather around Mummy Mountain with its 13,413 feet. 
A noble company, indeed, herded in close comrade- 
ship, the centre of many square miles of summits 
scarcely less. Ypsilon's big Greek letter, outlined in 
perpetual snow, is one of the famous landmarks of the 
northern end. Hagues Peak supports Hallett Glacier, 
the most interesting in the park. Dunraven, aloof 
and of slenderer outline, offers marked contrast to the 
enormous sprawling bulk of Mummy, always por- 
tentous, often capped with clouds. The range is split 
by many line canyons and dotted with glacial lakes, 
an undeveloped wilderness designed by kindly nature 
for summer exploration. 

But it is the Front Range, the snowy pinnacled 
rampart, which commands profoundest attention. 

From Specimen Mountain in the far northwest, 
a spill of lava, now the haunt of mountain sheep, the 
continental divide southward piles climax upon climax. 
Following it at an elevation well exceeding twelve 
thousand feet, the hardy, venturesome climber looks 
westward down a slope of bald granite, thickly strewn 



I04 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

with boulders; eastward he gazes into a succession of 
gigantic gorges dropping upon the east, forest grown, 
lake-set canyons deep in mid-foreground, the great 
plateau spreading to its foothills far beyond the can- 
yons, with now and then a sun glint from some irriga- 
tion pond beyond the foothills on the misty plains of 
eastern Colorado. Past the monolith of Terra Tomah 
Peak, with its fine glacial gorge of many lakes, past 
the Sprague Glacier, largest of the several shrunken 
fields of moving ice which still remain, he finds, from 
the summit of Flattop Mountain, a broad spectacle of 
real sublimity. 

But there is a greater viewpoint close at hand. 
Crossing the Flattop Trail which here ascends from 
the settlements below on its way to the west side, 
and skirting the top of the Tyndall Glacier, a scramble 
of four hundred feet lands him on the summit of Hal- 
lett Peak, 12,725 feet in altitude. Here indeed is 
reward. Below him lies the sheer abyss of the Tyndall 
Gorge, Dream Lake, a drop of turquoise in its depths; 
beyond it a moraine reaches out upon the plateau — ■ 
six miles in length, a mile and more in width, nearly a 
thousand feet in height, holding Bierstadt Lake upon 
its level forested crown, an eloquent reminder of that 
ancient time when enormous glaciers ripped the gran- 
ite from these gorges to heap it in long winding hills 
upon the plains below. Turning southerly, the Wild 
Gardens further spread before his gaze, a tumble of 
granite masses rising from lake-dotted, richly forested 
bottoms. The entrance to Loch Vale, gem canyon of 



M 



THE HEART OF THE ROCKIES 105 

the Rockies, lies in the valley foreground. Adjoining 
it, the entrance to Glacier Gorge, showing one of its 
several lakes, rests in peaceful contrast with its im- 
pressive eastern wall, a long, winding, sharp-edged 
buttress pushing southward and upward to support 
the northern shoulder of the monster. Longs Peak, 
whose squared summit, from here for all the world 
like a chef's cap, outlines sharply against the sky. 
Hallett Peak welcomes the climber to the Heart of 
the Rockies at perhaps their most gorgeous point. 

South of Hallett difficult going will disclose new 
viewpoints of supreme wildness. Otis Peak, nearly 
as high as Hallett, looks down upon the Andrews Gla- 
cier, and displays the length of Loch Vale, at whose 
head towers Taylor Peak, a giant exceeding thirteen 
thousand feet. 

I have not sketched this tour of the continental 
divide as a suggestion for travel, for there are no trails, 
and none but the mountaineer, experienced in pioneer- 
ing, could accomplish it with pleasure and success, but 
as a convenient mode of picturing the glories of the 
continental divide. Some day a trail, even perhaps a 
road, for one is practicable, should make it fully acces- 
sible to the greater public. Meantime Flattop Trail 
invites valley dwellers of all degrees, afoot and horse- 
back, up to a point on the divide from which HaUett's 
summit and its stupendous view is no great conquest. 

The gorges of the Wild Gardens are most enjoyed 
from below. Trails of no difficulty lead from the 
settlements to Fern and Odessa Lakes in a canyon un- 



io6 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

surpassed; to Bear Lake at the outlet of the Tyndall 
Gorge; to Loch Vale, whose flower-carpeted terraces 
and cirque lakelets, Sky Pond and the Lake of Glass, 
are encircled with mighty canyon walls; and to Gla- 
cier Gorge, which leads to the foot of Longs Peak's 
western precipice. These are spots, each a day's 
round trip from convenient over-night hotels, which 
deserve all the fame that wUl be theirs when the peo- 
ple come to know them, for as yet only a few hundreds 
a summer of Rocky Mountain's hundred thousand 
take the trouble to visit them. 

To better understand the charm of these gray 
monsters, and the valleys and chasms between their 
knees, we must pause a moment to picture what archi- 
tects call the planting, for trees and shrubs and flowers 
play as important a part in the informal architectural 
scheme of the Front Range as they do in the formality 
of a palace. It will be recalled that the zones of vege- 
tation from the equator to the frozen ice fields of the 
far north find their counterparts in altitude. The 
foothills bordering the Rocky Mountain National 
Park lie in the austral zone of our middle and eastern 
states; its splendid east-side plateau and inter-moun- 
tain valleys represent the luxuriance of the Canadian 
zone; its mountains pass rapidly up in a few thousand 
feet through the Hudsonian zone, including timber- 
line at about 11,500 feet; and its highest summits 
carry only the mosses, hchens, stunted grasses, and 
tiny alpine flowerets of the Arctic Zone. 

Thus one may walk waist deep through the mar- 



THE HEART OF THE ROCKIES 107 

vellous wild flower meadows of Loch Vale, bordered 
by luxuriant forests of majestic Engelmami spruce, 
pines, firs, junipers, and many deciduous shrubs, and 
look upward at the gradations of all vegetation to the 
arctic seas. 

Especially interesting is the revelation when one 
takes it in order, climbing into the range. The Fall 
River Road displays it, but not dramatically; the 
forest approach is too long, the cHmb into the Hud- 
sonian Zone too short, and not topical. The same is 
true of the trail up beautiful Forest Canyon. The 
reverse is true of the Ute Trail, which brings one too 
quickly to the stupendous arctic summit of Trail 
Ridge. The Flattop Trail is in many respects the most 
satisfying, particularly if one takes the time to make 
the summit of Hallett Peak, and hunts for arctic 
flowerets on the way. But one may also accomplish 
the purpose in Loch Vale by climbing all the way to 
Sky Pond, at the very foot of steep little Taylor Gla- 
cier, or by ascending Glacier Gorge to its head, or by 
climbing the Twin Sisters, or Longs Peak as far as 
Boulder Field, or up the St. Vrain valley to the top of 
Meadow Mountain, or Mount Copeland. 

All of these ascents are made by fair trails, and all 
display the fascinating spectacle of timber-line, which 
in Rocky Mountain National Park, I believe, attains 
its most satisfying popular expression; by which I 
mean that here the panorama of the everlasting strug- 
gle between the ambitious climbing forests and the 
winter gales of the summits seems to be condensed 



io8 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

and summarized, to borrow a figure from the text- 
books, as I have not happened to find it elsewhere. 
Following up some sheltered forested ravine to its 
head, we swing out upon the wind-swept slopes lead- 
ing straight to the summit. Snow patches increase in 
size and number as the conifers thin and shrink. 
Presently the trees bend eastward, permanently mis- 
shaped by the icy winter blasts. Presently they curve 
in semi-circles, or rise bravely in the lee of .some great 
rock, to bend at right angles from its top. Here and 
there are full-grown trees growing prostrate, like a 
rug, upon the ground. 

Close to the summit trees shrink to the size of 
shrubs, but some of these have heavy trunks a few 
feet high, and doubtless have attained their fulness of 
development. Gradually they thin and disappear, giv- 
ing place to wiry, powerful, deciduous shrubs, and these 
in turn to growths still smaller. There are forests 
of willows just above Rocky Mountain's timber-line, 
two or three inches tall, and many acres in extent. 

From the Front Range, well in the south of the 
park, a spur of toothed granite peaks springs two 
miles eastward to the monarch of the park. Longs 
Peak. It is this position in advance of the range, as 
much as the advantage of its 14,255 feet of altitude, 
which enables this famous mountain to become the 
climax of every east-side view. 

Longs Peak has a remarkable personality. It is an 
architectural creation, a solid granite temple, strongly 
buttressed upon four sides. From every point of view 



THE HEART OF THE ROCKIES 109 

it is profoundly different, but always consistent and 
recognizable. Seen from the east, it is supported on 
either side by mountains of majesty. Joined with it 
on the north, Mount Lady Washington rises 13,269 
feet, the cleft between their siunmits being the way of 
the trail to Longs Peak summit. Merging with it in 
mass upon the south, Mount Meeker rises 13,911 feet. 
Once the three were one monster mountain. Frosts 
and rains carried off the crust strata, bared the granite 
core, and chipped it into three summits, while a glacier 
of large size gouged out of its middle the abyss which 
divides the mountains, and carved the precipice, 
which drops twenty-four hundred feet from Longs 
Peak summit to Chasm Lake. The Chasm, which is 
easily reached by trail from the hotels at the moun- 
tain's foot, is one of the wildest places in America. 
It may be explored in a day. 

Mountain climbing is becoming the fashion in 
Rocky Mountain National Park among those who 
never climbed before, and it will not be many years 
before its inmost recesses are penetrated by innumera- 
ble trampers and campers. The "stunt" of the park 
is the ascent of Longs Peak. This is no particular 
matter for the experienced, for the trail is well worn, 
and the ascent may be made on horseback to the boulder 
field, less than two thousand feet from the summit; 
but to the inexperienced it appears an undertaking of 
first magnitude. From the boulder field the trail car- 
ries out upon a long sharp slant which drops into the 
precipice of Glacier Gorge, and ascends the^box-like 



no THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

summit cap by a shelf trail which sometimes has ter- 
rors for the unaccustomed. Several hundred persons 
make the ascent each summer without accident, in- 
cluding many women and a few children. The one 
risk is that accidental snow obscure the trail; but 
Longs Peak is not often ascended without a guide. 

The view from the summit of the entire national 
park, of the splendid range south which should be in 
the park but is not, of the foothills and pond-spotted 
plains in the east, of Denver and her mountain back- 
ground, and of the Medicine Bow and other ranges 
west of the park, is one of the country's great spec- 
tacles. Longs Peak is sometimes climbed at night for 
the sunrise. 

The six miles of range between Longs Peak and 
the southern boundary of the park show five towering 
snow-spotted mountains of noble beauty, Mount Alice, 
Tanima Peak, Mahana Peak, Ouzel Peak, and Mount 
Copeland. Tributary to the Wild Basin, which corre- 
sponds, south of Longs Peak, to the Wild Gardens 
north of it, are gorges of loveliness the waters of whose 
exquisite lakes swell St. Vrain Creek. 

The Wild Basin is one of Rocky Mountain's lands 
of the future. The entire west side is another, for, 
except for the lively settlement at Grand Lake, its 
peaks and canyons, meadows, lakes, and valleys are 
seldom visited. It is natural that the east side, with 
its broader plateaus and showier range, should have 
the first development, but no accessible country of the 
splendid beauty of the west side can long remain 




l-'rom a photograph by W iswall Brothers 

SUMMIT OF LOXGS PEAK. ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK 
Twenty-four humlrol [cut from water to peak, a mighty chasm carved by an ancient glacier 



THE HEART OF THE ROCKIES iii 

neglected. Its unique feature is the broad and beau- 
tiful valley of the North Fork of the Grand River, 
here starting for its great adventure in the Grand 
Canyon of the Colorado. 

V 

The Rockies are a masterpiece of erosion. When 
forces below the surface began to push them high in 
air, their granite cores were covered thousands of feet 
deep with the sediments of the great sea of whose 
bottom once they were a part. The higher they rose 
the more insistently frosts and rains concentrated upon 
their uplifting summits; in time all sedimentary rocks 
were washed away, and the granite beneath exposed. 

Then the frosts and rains, and later the glaciers, 
attacked the granite, and carved it into the jagged 
forms of to-day. The glaciers moulded the gorges 
which the streams had cut. The glaciers have passed, 
but still the work goes on. Slowly the mountains 
rise, and slowly, but not so slowly, the frosts chisel 
and the rains carry away. If conditions remain as 
now, history will again repeat itself, and the gorgeous 
peaks of to-day will decline, a million years or more 
from now, into the low rounded summits of our eastern 
Appalachians, and later into the flat, soil-hidden gran- 
ites of Canada. 

These processes may be seen in practical example. 
Ascend the precipitous east side by the Flattop Trail, 
for instance, and notice particularly the broad, rolling 
level of the continental divide. For many miles it is 



112 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

nothing but a lofty, bare, undulating plain, inter- 
spersed with summits, but easy to travel except for its 
accumulation of immense loose boulders. This plain 
slopes gently toward the west, and presently breaks, 
as on the east, into cliffs and canyons. It is a stage 
in the reduction by erosion of mountains which, ex- 
cept for erosion, might have risen many thousands of 
feet higher. Geologists call it a peneplain, which 
means nearly-a-plain; it is from fragmentary remains 
of peneplains that they trace ranges long ages washed 
away. History may, in some dim future age, repeat 
still another wonder, for upon the flattened wreck of 
the Front Range may rise, by some earth movement, 
a new and even nobler range. 

But what about the precipitous eastern front? 

That masterpiece was begun by water, accom- 
plished by ice, and finished by water. In the begin- 
ning, streams determined the direction of the valleys 
and carved these valleys deep. Then came, in very 
recent times, as geologists measure earth's history, 
the Great Ice Age. As a result of falling temperature, 
the mountains became covered, except their higher 
summits and the continental divide, with glaciers. 
These came in at least two invasions, and remained 
many hundreds of thousands of years. When changing 
climate melted them away, the Rocky Mountain Na- 
tional Park remained not greatly different from what 
it is to-day. Frosts and rains have softened and 
beautified it since. 

These glaciers, first forming in the beds of streams 



THE HEART OF THE ROCKIES 113 

by the accumulations of snow which presently turned 
to ice and moved slowly down the valleys, began at 
once to pluck out blocks of granite from their starting- 
points, and settle themselves in cirques. They plucked 
downward and backward, undermining their cirque 
walls until falUng granite left precipices; armed with 
imprisoned rocks, they gouged and scraped their beds, 
and these processes, constantly repeated for thousands 
of centuries, produced the mountain forms, the giant 
gorges, the enormous precipices, and the rounded 
granite valleys of the stupendous east elevation of the 
Front Range. 

There is a good illustration in Iceberg Lake, near 
the base of Trail Ridge on the Ute Trail. This precip- 
itous well, which every visitor to Rocky Mountain 
should see, originally was an ice-filled hollow in the 
high surface of the ridge. When the Fall River Gla- 
cier moved eastward, the ice in the hoUow slipped 
down to join it, and by that very motion became it- 
self a glacier. Downward and backward plucking in 
the cirque which it presently made, and the falling of 
the undermined walls, produced in, say, a few hundred 
thousand years this striking well, upon whose lake's 
surface visitors of to-day will find cakes of floating 
ice, broken from the sloping snow-field which is the 
old glacier's remainder and representative of to-day. 

The glaciers which shaped Rocky Mountain's big 
canyons had enormous size and thickness. Ice streams 
from scores of glacial cirques joined fan-like to form 
the Wild Basin Glacier, which swept out through the 



114 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

narrow valley of St. Vrain. Four glaciers headed at 
Longs Peak, one west of Mount Meeker, which gave 
into the Wild Basin; one west of Longs Peak, which 
joined the combination of glaciers that hollowed Loch 
Vale; one upon the north, which moulded Glacier 
Gorge; and the small but powerful glacier which hol- 
lowed the great Chasm on the east front of Longs 
Peak. The Loch Vale and Glacier Gorge glaciers 
joined with giant ice streams as far north as Tyndall 
Gorge to form the Bartholf Glacier; and north of that 
the mighty Thompson Glacier drained the divide to 
the head of Forest Canyon, while the Fall River Glacier 
drained the Mummy Range south of Hagues Peak. 

These undoubtedly were the main glacial streams 
of those ancient days, the agencies responsible for the 
gorgeous spectacle we now enjoy. The greater gla- 
ciers reached a thickness of two thousand feet; they 
have left records scratched high upon the granite walls. 

As the glaciers moved down their valleys they 
carried, imprisoned in their bodies and heaped upon 
their backs and sides, the plunder from their wreckage 
of the range. This they heaped as large moraines in 
the broad valleys. The moraines of the Rocky Moun- 
tain National Park are unequalled, in my observation, 
for number, size, and story-telling ability. They are 
conspicuous features of the great plateau upon the 
east, and of the broad valley of the Grand River west 
of the park. Even the casual visitor of a day is stirred 
to curiosity by the straight, high wall of the great 
moraine for which Moraine Park is named, and by 




From a photograph by Willis T. Lee 

THE ANDREWS GLACIER HANGS FROM THE CONTINENTAL DHTDE 
A slacier in the Rocky Mountain National Park which can be studied by visitors 




From a photograph by H. T. Cowling 

A ROCKY MOUNTAIN CIRQUE CARVED FROM SOLID GRANITE 
Iceberg Lake was cut eighteen hundred feet deep by an ancient glacier 



THE HEART OF THE ROCKIES 115 

the high curved hill which springs from the north- 
eastern shoulder of Longs Peak, and encircles the 
eastern foot of Mount Meeker. 

These and other moraines are fascinating features 
of any visit to Rocky Mountain National Park. The 
motor roads disclose them, the trails travel them. In 
combination with the gulfs, the shelved canyons and 
the scarred and serrated peaks and walls, these mo- 
raines offer the visitor a thrilling mystery story of the 
past, the unravelling of whose threads and the recon- 
struction of whose plot and climax will add zest and 
interest to a summer's outing, and bring him, inci- 
dentally, in close communion with nature in a thou- 
sand happy moods. 

VI 

The limitations of a chapter permit no mention 
of the gigantic prehistoric monsters of land, sea, and 
air which once haunted the site of this noble park, nor 
description of its more intimate beauties, nor detail of 
its mountaineering joys; for all of which and much 
other invaluable information I refer those interested 
to publications of the National Park Service, Depart- 
ment of the Interior, by Doctor Willis T. Lee and 
Major Roger W. Toll. But something must be told 
of its early history. 

In 18 19 the exploring expedition which President 
Madison sent west under Colonel S. H. Long, while 
camping at the mouth of La Poudre River, was greatly 
impressed by the magnificence of a lofty, square- topped 



ii6 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

mountain. They approached it no nearer, but named 
it Longs Peak, in honor of their leader. Parkman 
records seeing it in 1845. 

The pioneers, of course, knew the country. Deer, 
elk, and sheep were probably hunted there in the 
forties and fifties. Joel Estes, the first settler, built a 
cabin in the foothills in i860, hence the title of Estes 
Park. James Nugent, afterward widely celebrated as 
"Rocky Mountain Jim," arrived in 1868. Others 
followed slowly. 

William N. Byers, founder of the Rocky Mountain 
News, made the first attempt to climb Longs Peak in 
1864. He did not succeed then, but four years later, 
with a party which included Major J. W. Powell, who 
made the first exploration of the Grand Canyon the 
following year, he made the summit. In 187 1 the 
Reverend E. J. Lamb, the first regular guide on Longs 
Peak, made the first descent by the east precipice, a 
dangerous feat. 

The Earl of Dunraven visited Estes Park in 1871, 
attracted by the big game hunting, and bought land. 
He projected an immense preserve, and induced men to 
file claims which he planned to acquire after they had 
secured possession; but the claims were disallowed. 
Albert Bierstadt visited Dunraven in 1874, and painted 
canvases which are famous in American art. 

It was Dunraven, also, who built the first hotel. 
Tourists began to arrive in 1865. In 1874 the first 
stage line was established, coming in from Longmont. 
Telephone connection was made in 1906. 



THE HEART OF THE ROCKIES 117 

Under the name of Estes Park, the region pros- 
pered. Fifty thousand people were estimated to have 
visited it in 1914. It was not, however, till the na- 
tional park was created, in 191 5, that the momi tains 
assumed considerable importance except as an agree- 
able and inspiring background to the broad plateau. 



Mckinley, giant of giants 

Mount McKinley National Park, Alaska. Area, 
ABOUT 2,200 Square Miles 

THE monster mountain of this continent, "the 
majestic, snow-crowned American monarch," as 
General Greeley called it, was made a national park in 
191 7. Mount McKinley rises 20,300 feet above tide- 
water, and 17,000 feet above the eyes of the beholder 
standing on the plateau at its base. Scenically, it is 
the highest mountain in the world, for those summits 
of the Andes and Himalayas which are loftier as meas- 
ured from sea level, can be viewed closely only from 
valleys whose altitudes range from 10,000 to 15,000 
feet. Its enormous bulk is shrouded in perpetual 
snow two-thirds down from its summit, and the foot- 
hills and broad plains upon its north and west are 
populated with mountain sheep and caribou in un- 
precedented numbers. 

To appreciate Mount McKinley's place among 
national parks, one must know what it means in the 
anatomy of the continent. The western margin of 
North America is bordered by a broad mountainous 
belt known as the Pacific System, which extends from 
Mexico northwesterly into and through Alaska, to the 
very end of the Aleutian Islands, and includes such 

celebrated ranges as the Sierra Nevada, the Cascade, 

118 



McKINLEY, GIANT OF GIANTS 119 

and the St. Elias. In Alaska, at the head of Cook 
Inlet, it swmgs a sharp curve to the southwest and be- 
comes Alaska's mountain axis. This sharp curve, for 
all the world like a monstrous granite hinge connecting 
the northwesterly and southwesterly limbs of the 
System, is the gigantic Alaska Range, which is higher 
and broader than the Sierra Nevada, and of greater 
relief and extent than the Alps. Near the centre of 
this range, its climax in position, height, bulk, and 
majesty, stands Mount McKinley. Its glistening 
peak can be seen on clear days in most directions for 
two hundred miles. 

For many years Mount St. Elias, with its eighteen 
thousand feet of altitude, was considered North 
America's loftiest summit. That was because it 
stands in that part of Alaska which was first devel- 
oped. The Klondike region, far northward, was well 
on the way to development before McKinley became 
officially recognized as the mountain climax of the 
continent. But that does not mean that it remained 
unknown. The natives of the Cook Inlet country on 
the east knew it as Doleika, and tell you that it is the 
rock which a god threw at his eloping wife. They say 
it was once a volcano, which is not the fact. The 
Aleutes on the south called it Traleika, the big moun- 
tain. The natives of the Kuskokwim country on the 
west knew it as Denalai, the god, father of the great 
range. The Russians who established the first per- 
manent white settlement in Alaska on Kodiak Island 
knew it as Bulshia Gora, the great mountain. Cap- 



120 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

tain Cook, who in 1778 explored the inlet which since 
has borne his name, does not mention it, but Van- 
couver in 1794 unquestionably meant it in his refer- 
ence to '^ distant stupendous mountains." 

After the United States acquired Alaska, in 1867, 
there is little mention of it for some years. But Frank 
Densmore, an explorer of 1889, entered the Kuskok- 
wim region, and took such glowing accounts of its 
magnificence back to the Yukon that for years it was 
known through the settlements as Densmore's Moun- 
tain. In 1885 Lieutenant Henry C. Allen, U. S. A., 
made a sketch of the range from his skin boat on the 
Tanana River, a hundred and fifty miles away, which is 
the earliest known picture of McKinley. 

Meantime the neighborhood was invaded by pros- 
pectors from both sides. The Cook Inlet gold fields 
were exploited in 1894. Two years later W. A. Dickey 
and his partner. Monks, two young Princeton grad- 
uates, exploring north from their workings, recognized 
the mountain's commanding proportions and named 
it Mount McKinley, by which it rapidly became known, 
and was entered on the early maps. With crude in- 
struments improvised on the spot, Dickey estimated 
the mountain's height as twenty thousand feet — a real 
achievement. When Belmore Browne, who climbed 
the great peak in 191 2, asked Dickey why he chose the 
name, Dickey told him that he was so disgusted with 
the free-silver arguments of men travelling with him 
that he named the mountain after the most ardent 
gold-standard man he knew. 



McKINLEY, GIANT OF GI^VNTS 121 

The War Department sent several parties to the 
region during the next few years to explore, and the 
United States Geological Survey, beginning in 1898 
with the Eldridge-Muldrow party, has had topo- 
graphical and geological parties in the region almost 
continuously since. In 19 15 the Government began 
the railroad from Seward to Fairbanks. Its course lies 
from Cook Inlet up the Susitna River to the head- 
waters of the Nenana River, where it crosses the 
range. This will make access to the region easy and 
comfortable. It was to safeguard the enormous game 
herds from the hordes of hunters which the railroad 
was expected to bring rather than to conserve an alpine 
region scenically unequalled that Congress set aside 
twenty-two hundred square miles under the name of 
the Mount McKinley National Park. 

From the white sides of McKinley and his giant 
neighbors descend glaciers of enormous bulk and great 
length. Their waters drain on the east and south, 
through the Susitna River and its tributaries, into the 
Pacific; and on the north and west, through tributaries 
of the Yukon and Kuskokwim, into Bering Sea. 

The south side of McKinley is forbidding in the 
extreme, but its north and west fronts pass abruptly 
into a plateau of gravels, sands, and silts twenty-five 
hundred to three thousand feet in altitude, whose gentle 
valleys lead the traveller up to the very sides of the 
granite monster, and whose mosses and grasses pasture 
the caribou. 

The national park boundaries enclose immense 



122 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

areas of this plateau. The contours of its rounded 
rolling elevations mark the courses of innumerable 
streams, and occasionally abut upon great sweeping 
glaciers. Low as it is, the plateau is generally above 
timber-line. The day will come when roads will wind 
through its valleys, and hotels and camps will nestle 
in its sheltered hollows; while the great herds of cari- 
bou, more than one of which has been estimated at 
fifteen hundred animals, will pasture like sheep within 
close range of the camera. For the wild animals of 
McKinley National Park, having never been hunted, 
were fearless of the explorers, and now will never learn 
to fear man. The same is true in lesser measure of 
the more timid mountain sheep which frequent the 
foot-hills in numbers not known elsewhere. Charles 
Sheldon counted more than five hundred in one 
ordinary day's foot journey through the valleys. 

The magic of summer life on this sunHt plateau, 
with its limitless distances, its rushing streams, its 
enormous crawling glaciers, its waving grasses, its 
sweeping gentle valleys, its myriad friendly animals, 
and, back of all and commanding all, its never-for- 
gotten and ever-controlling presence, the shining Range 
and Master Mountain, powerfully grip imagination 
and memory. One never can look long away from the 
mountain, whose delicate rose tint differentiates it 
from other great mountains. Here is ever present an 
intimate sense of the infinite, which is reminiscent of 
that pang which sometimes one may get by gazing 
long into the starry zenith. From many points of 



McKINLEY, GIANT OF GIANTS 123 

view McKinley looks its giant size. As the climber 
ascends the basal ridges there are places where its 
height and bulk appall. 

Along the northern edge of the park lies the Kan- 
tishna mining district. In 1906 there was a wild stam- 
pede to this region. Diamond City, Bearpaw City, 
Glacier City, McKinley City, Roosevelt, and other 
rude mining settlements came into rapid existence. 
Results did not adequately reward the thousands who 
flocked to the new field, and the '^ cities" were aban- 
doned. A hundred or two miners remain, scattered 
thinly over a large area, which is forested here and there 
with scrubby growths, and, in localities, is remarkably 
productive of cultivated fruits and vegetables. 

Few know and few will know Mount McKinley. 
It is too monstrous for any but the hardiest to dis- 
cover its ice-protected secrets. The South Peak, which 
is the summit, has been climbed twice, once by the 
Parker-Browne party in 191 2, after two previous un- 
successful expeditions, and once, the year following, 
by the party of Archdeacon Hudson Stuck, who grati- 
fied an ambition which had arisen out of his many 
years of strenuous missionary work among the Alaskan 
Indians. From the records of these two parties we 
«:ather nearly all that is known of the mountain. The 
North Peak, which is several hundred feet lower, was 
climbed by Anderson and Taylor of the Tom Lloyd 
party, in 1913. 

From each of these peaks an enormous buttressing 
ridge sweeps northward until it merges into the foot- 



124 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

hills and the great plain. These ridges are roughly 
parallel, and carry between them the Denali Glacier, 
to adopt Belmore Browne's suggested name, and its 
forks and tributaries. Up this glacier is the difficult 
passage to the summit. Tremendous as it is, the great- 
est perhaps of the north side, the Denali Glacier by 
no means compares with the giants which flow from 
the southern front. 

In 1903 Judge James Wickersham, afterward Del- 
egate to Congress from Alaska, made the first attempt 
to climb McKinley; it failed through his underestima- 
tion of the extensive equipment necessary. In 1906 
Doctor Frederick A. Cook, who meantime also had 
made an unsuccessful attempt from the north side, 
led an expedition from the south which included Pro- 
fessor Herschel Parker of Columbia University, and 
Mr. Belmore Browne, artist, explorer, and big game 
hunter. Ascending the Yentna River, it reached a 
point upon the Tokositna Glacier beyond which prog- 
ress was impossible, and returned to Cook Inlet and 
disbanded. Parker returned to New York, and Cook 
proposed that Browne should lay in a needed supply 
of game while he, with a packer named Barrill, should 
make what he described as a rapid reconnaissance 
preparatory to a further attempt upon the summit 
the following year. Browne wanted to accompany 
him, but was overpersuaded. Cook and Barrill then 
ascended the Susitna, struck into the country due 
south of McKinley, and returned to Tyonik with the 
announcement that they had reached the summit. 



McKINLEY, GIANT OF GIANTS 125 

Cook exhibited a photograph of Barrill standing upon 
a crag, which he said was the summit. A long and 
painful controversy followed upon Cook's return east 
with this claim. 

In all probability the object of the Parker-Browne 
expedition of 19 10 was as much to follow Cook's 
course and check his claim as to reach the summit. 
The first object was attained, and Herman L. Tucker, 
a national forester, was photographed standing on the 
identical crag upon which Cook had photographed 
Barrill four years before. This crag was found miles 
south of McKinley, with other peaks higher than its 
own intervening. From here the party advanced up 
a glacier of enormous size to the very foot of the upper 
reaches of the mountain's south side, but was stopped 
by gigantic snow walls, which defeated every attempt 
to cross. "At the slightest touch of the sun," writes 
Browne, "the great cliffs literally smoke with ava- 
lanches." 

The Parker-Browne expedition undertaken in 191 2 
for purposes of exploration, also approached from the 
south, but, following the Susitna River farther up, 
crossed the Alaska Range with dog trains to the north 
side at a hitherto unexplored point. Just before cross- 
ing the divide it entered what five years later became 
the Mount McKinley National Park, and, agamst an 
April blizzard, descended into a land of many gorgeous 
glaciers. "We were now," writes Belmore Browne, 
"in a wilderness paradise. The mountains had a wild, 
picturesque look, due to their bare rock summits, and 



126 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

big game was abundant. We were wild with enthu- 
siasm over the beauty of it all, and every few minutes 
as we jogged along some one would gaze fondly at the 
surrounding mountains and ejaculate: 'This is sure a 
white man's country.'" 

Of these "happy hunting grounds," as Browne 
chapters the park country in his book, Stephen R. 
Capps of the United States Geological Survey says in 
his report: 

''Probably no part of America is so well supplied 
with wild game, unprotected by reserves, as the area 
on the north slope of the Alaska Range, west of the 
Nanana River. This region has been so little visited 
by white men that the game herds have, until recent 
years, been little molested by hunters. The white 
mountain sheep are particularly abundant in the main 
Alaska Range, and in the more rugged foot-hills. 
Caribou are plentiful throughout the entire area, and 
were seen in bands numbering many hundred indi- 
viduals. Moose are numerous in the lowlands, and 
range over all the area in which timber occurs. Black 
bears may be seen in or near timbered lands, and 
grizzly bears range from the rugged mountains to the 
lowlands. Rabbits and ptarmigan are at times re- 
markably numerous." 

Parker and Browne camped along the Muldrow 
Glacier, now a magnificent central feature of the park. 
Then they made for McKinley summit. Striking the 
Denali Glacier, they ascended it with a dog train to 
an altitude of eleven thousand feet, where they made a 



McKINLEY, GIANT OF GIANTS 127 

base camp and went on afoot, packing provisions and 
camp outfit on their backs. At one place they ascended 
an incoming glacier over ice cascades, four thousand 
feet high. From their last camp they cut steps in the 
ice for more than three thousand feet of final ascent, and 
attained the top on July i in the face of a blizzard. 
On the northeastern end of the level summit, and only 
five minutes' walk from the little hillock which forms 
the supreme summit, the blizzard completely blinded 
them. It was impossible to go on, and to wait meant 
rapid death by freezing; with extreme difficulty they 
returned to their camp. Two days later they made a 
second attempt, but were again enveloped in an ice 
storm that rendered progress impossible. Exhaus- 
tion of supplies forbade another try, and saved their 
lives, for a few days later a violent earthquake shook 
McKinley to its summit. Later on Mr. Browne iden- 
tified this earthquake as concurrent with the terrific 
explosive eruption which blew off the top of Mount 
Katmai, on the south coast of Alaska. 

The following spring the Stuck-Karstens party 
made the summit upon that rarest of occasions with 
Mount McKinley, a perfect day. Archdeacon Stuck 
describes the ''actual summit" as "a little crater-like 
snow basin, sixty or sixty-five feet long, and twenty 
to twenty-five feet wide, with a hay-cock of snow at 
either end — the south one a little higher than the 
north." Ignoring official and recognized nomenclature, 
and calling McKinley and Foraker by their Kuskokwim 
Indian names, he writes of Mount Foraker: "Denali's 



128 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

Wife does not appear at all save from the actual sum- 
mit of Denali, for she is completely hidden by his 
South Peak, until the moment when his South Peak is 
surmounted. And never was nobler sight displayed 
to man than that great isolated mountain spread out 
completely, with all its spurs and ridges, its cliffs and 
its glaciers, lofty and mighty, and yet far beneath us." 

"Above us," he writes a few pages later, "the sky 
took on a blue so deep that none of us had ever gazed 
upon a midday sky like it before. It was deep, rich, 
lustrous, transparent blue, as dark as Prussian blue, 
but intensely blue; a hue so strange, so increasingly 
impressive, that to one at least it 'seemed like special 
news of God,' as a new poet sings. We first noticed 
the darkening tint of the upper sky in the Grand Basin, 
and it deepened as we rose. Tyndall observed and 
discussed this phenomenon in the Alps, but it seems 
scarcely to have been mentioned since." 

A couple of months before the Parker-Browne 
party started for the top, there was an ascent of the 
lower North Peak which, for sheer daring and en- 
durance must rank high in the history of adventure. 
Four prospectors and miners from the Kantishna region 
organized by Tom Lloyd, took advantage of the hard 
ice of May, and an idle dog team, to make for the 
summit. Their motive seems to have been little more 
than to plant a pole where it could be seen by tele- 
scope, as they thought, from Fairbanks; that was 
why they chose the North Peak. They used no ropes, 
alpenstocks, or scientific equipment of any sort, and 



iiom ii photograph by G. B. Gordon 

MOUXT McKIXLEY, LOOMING ABOVE THE GREAT ALASKAN RANGE 



^^i^m^^. 




From a pholo\;raph hy La]'oy 

ARCHDEACON STUCK'S PARTV HALF-WAY UP THE MOUNTAIN 



1^ 




THE SUMMIT OF MOUNT McKINLEY 



McKINLEY, GIANT OF GIANTS 129 

carried only one camera, the chance possession of 
McGonagall. 

They made their last camp at an altitude of eleven 
thousand feet. Here Lloyd remained, while Ander- 
son, Taylor, and McGonagall attempted the summit 
in one day's supreme effort. Near the top McGona- 
gall was overcome by mountain sickness. Anderson 
and Taylor went on and planted their pole near the 
North summit, where the Stuck-Karstens party saw 
it a year later in their ascent of the South Peak. 

So extraordinary a feat of strength and endur- 
ance will hardly be accomplished again unless, per- 
haps, by hardy miners of the arctic wilderness. "The 
North Pole's nothing to fellows like us," one of them 
said later on; ''once strike gold there, and we'll build 
a town on it in a month." 

The published records of the Parker-Browne and 
Stuck-Karstens expeditions emphasize the laborious 
nature of the climbing. The very isolation which 
gives McKinley its spectacular elevation multiplies the 
difficulties of ascent by lowering the snow line thousands 
of feet below the snow line of the Himalayas and Andes 
with their loftier surrounding valleys. Travel on the 
glaciers was trying in the extreme, for much of the 
way had to be sounded for hidden crevasses, and, 
after the selection of each new camping place, the 
extensive outfit must be returned for and sledded or 
carried up. Frequent barriers, often of great height, 
had to be surmounted by tortuous and exhausting 
detours over icy cliffs and soft snow. And always 



I30 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

special care must be taken against avalanches; the 
roar of avalanches for much of the latter journey was 
almost continuous. 

Toward the end, the thermometer was rarely 
above zero, and at night far below; but the heat and 
glare of the sun was stifling and blinding during much 
of the day; often they perspired profusely under their 
crushing burdens, with the thermometer nearly at 
zero. Snow fell daily, and often several times a day. 

It is probable that no other of the world's moun- 
tain giants presents climbing conditions so strenuous. 
Farming is successfully carried on in the Himalayas 
far above McKinley's level of perpetual snow, and 
Tucker reports having climbed a twenty-thousand-foot 
peak in the Andes with less exertion than it cost the 
Parker-Browne party, of which he had been a member, 
to mount the first forty-five hundred feet of McKinley. 

While McKinley will be climbed again and again 
in the future, the feat will scarcely be one of the pop- 
ular amusements of the national park. 

Yet Mount McKinley is the northern landmark 
of an immense unexplored mountain region south of 
the national park, which very far surpasses the Alps 
in every feature that has made the Alps world-famous. 
Of this region A. H. Brooks, Chief of the Alaska Divi- 
sion of the United States Geological Survey, writes: 

"Here lies a rugged highland area far greater in 
extent than all of Switzerland, a virgin field for 
explorers and mountaineers. He who would mas- 
ter unattained summits, explore unknown rivers, or 



McKINLEY, GIANT OF GIANTS 131 

traverse untrodden glaciers in a region whose scenic 
beauties are hardly equalled, has not to seek them in 
South America or Central Asia, for generations will 
pass before the possibilities of the Alaskan Range are 
exhausted. But this is not Switzerland, with its hotels, 
railways, trained guides, and well-worn paths. It will 
appeal only to him who prefers to strike out for him- 
self, who can break his own trail through trackless 
wilds, can throw the diamond hitch, and will take the 
chances of life and limb so dear to the heart of the 
true explorer." 

The hotels will come in time to the Mount McKin- 
ley National Park, and perhaps they will come also 
to the Alaskan Alps. Perhaps it is not straining the 
credulity of an age like ours to suggest that McKin- 
ley's commanding summit may be attained some day 
by aeroplane, with many of the joys and none of the 
distressing hardships endured by the weary climber. 
When this time comes, if it does come, there will be 
added merely another extraordinary experience to 
the very many unique and pleasurable experiences of 
a visit to the Mount McKinley National Park. 



VI 

LAFAYETTE AND THE EAST 
Lafayette National Park, Maine. Area, 10,000 Acres 

IT has been the policy of Congress to create national 
parks only from public lands, the title to which 
costs nothing to acquire. It may be many years be- 
fore the nation awakes to the fact that areas distin- 
guished for supreme scenery, historical association, or 
extraordinary scientific significance are worth con- 
serving even if conservation involves their purchase. 
The answer to the oft-asked question why the na- 
tional parks are all in the west is that the east passed 
into private possession before the national park idea 
assumed importance in the national consciousness. 

The existence of the two national parks east of the 
Rocky Mountains merely emphasizes the fact. The 
Hot Springs of Arkansas were set apart in 1832 while 
the Ozark Mountains were still a wilderness. The 
Lafayette National Park, in Maine, is made up of 
many small parcels of privately owned land which a 
group of public-spirited citizens, because of the im- 
possibility of securing national appropriations, pa- 
tiently acquired during a series of laborious years, and 
presented, in 1916, to the people of the United States. 

While refusing to purchase land for national 
parks. Congress nevertheless is buying large areas of 

132 



LAFAYETTE AND THE EAST 133 

eastern mountain land for national forest, the purpose 
being not only to conserve water sources, which na- 
tional parks would accomplish quite as thoroughly, 
but particularly to control lumbering operations in 
accord with principles which will insure the lumber 
supply of the future. Here and there in this reserve 
are limited areas of distinguished national park qual- 
ity, but whether they will be set aside as national 
parks is a question for the people and the future to 
decide. Certainly the mountain topography and the 
rich deciduous forests of the eastern United States 
should be represented in the national parks system by 
several fine examples. 

The Lafayette National Park differs from all 
other members of the national parks system in several 
important respects. It is in the far east; it combines 
seashore and mountain; it is clothed with a rich and 
varied growth of deciduous trees and eastern conifers; 
it is intimately associated with the very early his- 
tory of America. Besides which, it is a region of noble 
beauty, subtle charm and fascinating variety. 

The Appalachian Mountain uplift, which, roughly 
speaking, embraces all the ranges constituting the 
eastern rib of the continent, may be considered to 
include also the very ancient peneplains of New 
England. These tumbled hills and shallow valleys, 
accented here and there by ranges and monadnocks, 
by which the geologist means solitary peaks, are all 
that the frosts and rains of very many milhons of 
years and the glaciers of more recent geologic times 



134 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

have left of what once must have been a towering 
mountain region crested in snow. The wrinkHng of 
the earth's surface which produced this range occurred 
during the Devonian period when fishes were the pre- 
dominant inhabitants of the earth, many miUions of 
years before birds or even reptiles appeared. Its rise 
was accompanied by volcanic disturbances, whose evi- 
dences are abundant on islands between the mouth of 
the Penobscot and Mount Desert Island, though not 
within the park. The mind cannot conceive the lapse 
of time which has reduced this range, at an erosional 
speed no greater than to-day's, to its present level. 
During this process the coast line was also slowly sink- 
ing, changing valleys into estuaries and land-encircled 
bays. The coast of Maine is an eloquent chapter in 
the continent's ancient history, and the Lafayette 
National Park is one of the most dramatic paragraphs 
in the chapter. 

Where the Penobscot River reaches the sea, and 
for forty miles east, the sinking continental shore has 
deeply indented the coast line with a network of 
broad, twisting bays, enclosing many islands. The 
largest and finest of these is Mount Desert Island, for 
many years celebrated for its romantic beauty. Upon 
its northeast shore, facing Frenchman's Bay, is the 
resort town of Bar Harbor; other resorts dot its shores 
on every side. The island has a large summer popula- 
tion drawn from all parts of the country. Besides its 
hotels, there are many fine summer homes. 

The feature which especially distinguishes Mount 




IN LAFAYETTE NATIONAL PARK 
Echo Lake in the foreground. Sommes Harbor beyond Acadia 




SEA CAVES IN THE GRANITE 



Thus does the ocean everlastingly undermine the foundations of the mountains. PhotoRraph 
taken at low tide; Lafayette National Park 



LAFAYETTE AND THE EAST 135 

Desert Island from other islands, in fact from the en- 
tire Atlantic coast, is a group of granitic mountains 
which rise abruptly from the sea. They were once 
towering monsters, perhaps only one, unquestionably 
the loftiest for many miles around. They are the sole 
remainders upon the present coast line of a great 
former range. They are composed almost wholly of 
granite, worn down by the ages, but massive enough 
still to resist the agencies which wiped away their 
comrades. They rise a thousand feet or more, grim, 
rounded, cleft with winding valleys and deep passes, 
divided in places by estuaries of the sea, holding in 
their hollows many charming lakes. 

Their abrupt flanks gnawed by the beating sea, 
their valleys grown with splendid forests and bright- 
ened by wild flowers, their slopes and domes sprinkled 
with conifers which struggle for foothold in the cracks 
which the elements are widening and deepening in 
their granite surface, for years they have been the re- 
sort of thousands of climbers, students of nature and 
seekers of the beautiful; the views of sea, estuary, 
island, plain, lake, and mountain from the heights have 
no counterpart elsewhere. 

All this mountain wilderness, free as it was to the 
public, was in private ownership. Some of it was 
held by persons who had not seen it for years. Some 
of it was locked up in estates. The time came when 
owners began to plan fine summer homes high on the 
mountain slopes. A few, however, believed that the 
region should belong to the whole people, and out of 



136 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

this belief grew the movement, led by George B. 
Dorr and Charles W. Eliot, to acquire title and pre- 
sent it to the nation which would not buy it. They 
organized a holding association, to which they gave 
their own properties; for years afterward Mr. Dorr 
devoted most of his time to persuading others to con- 
tribute their holdings, and to raising subscriptions for 
the purchase of plots which were tied up in estates. 
In 1 916 the association presented five thousand acres 
to the Government, and President Wilson created it 
by proclamation the Sieur de Monts National Monu- 
ment. The gift has been greatly increased since. 
In 1 9 18 Congress made appropriations for its up- 
keep and development. In February, 191 9, Congress 
changed its name and status; it then became the La- 
fayette National Park. 

The impulse to name the new national park after 
the French general who came to our aid in time of 
need arose, of course, out of the war-time warmth of 
feeling for our ally, France. The region had been 
identified with early French exploration; the original 
monument had been named in commemoration of this 
historical association. The first European settlement 
in America north of the latitude of the Gulf of Mexico 
was here. Henry of Navarre had sent two famous 
adventurers to the new world, de Monts and Cham- 
plain. The first colony established by de Monts was 
at the mouth of the St. Croix River, which forms the 
eastern boundary of Maine, and the first land within 
the present United States which was reached by Cham- 



LAFAYETTE AND THE EAST 137 

plain was Mount Desert Island. This was in 1604, 
It was Champlain who gave the island its present 
name, after the mountains which rise so prominently 
from its rock-bound shore. To him, however, the 
name had a different significance than it first suggests 
to us. LTsle des Monts Deserts meant to him the 
Island of the Lonely Mountains, and lonely indeed 
they must have seemed above the flat shore line. 
Thus named, the place became a landmark for future, 
voyagers; among others Winthrop records seeing the 
mountains on his way to the Massachusetts colony in 
1630. He anchored opposite and fished for two hours, 
catching "sLxty-seven great cod," one of which was 
*'a yard around." 

"By a curious train of circumstances," writes 
George B. Dorr, "the titles by which these mountains 
to the eastward of Somes Sound are held go back to 
the early ownership of Mount Desert Island by the 
Crown of France. For it was granted by Louis XIV, 
grandson of Henry IV, to Antoine de la Mothe 
Cadillac, an ofBcer of noble family from southwestern 
France, then serving in Acadia, who afterward became 
successively the founder of Detroit and Governor of 
Louisiana — the Mississippi Valley. Cadillac lost it 
later, through English occupation of the region, own- 
ership passing, first to the Province, then to the 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. But presently the 
Commonwealth gave back to his granddaughter — 
Madame de Gregoire — and her husband, French refu- 
gees, the Island's eastern half, moved thereto by the 



138 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

part that France had taken in the recent War of In- 
dependence and by letters they had brought from 
Lafayette. And they came down and lived there." 

And so it naturally followed that, under stress of 
war enthusiasm, this reservation with its French asso- 
ciations should commemorate not only the old Province 
of Acadia, which the French yielded to England only 
after half a century of war, and England later on to 
us after another war, but the great war also in which 
France, England, and the United States all joined as 
allies in the cause of the world's freedom. In accord 
with this idea, the highest mountain looking upon the 
sea has been named the Flying Squadron, in honor of 
the service of the air, bom of an American invention, 
and carried to perfection by the three allies in common. 

The park may be entered from any of the sur- 
rounding resorts, but the main gateway is Bar Har- 
bor, which is reached by train, automobile, and steam- 
boat. No resort may be reached more comfortably, 
and hotel accommodations are ample. 

The mountains rise within a mile of the town. 
They extend westward for twelve miles, lying in two 
groups, separated by a fine salt-water fiord known as 
Somes Sound. The park's boundary is exceedingly 
irregular, with deep indentations of private property. 
It is enclosed, along the shore, by an excellent auto- 
mobile road; roads also cross it on both sides of Somes 
Sound. 

There are ten mountains in the eastern group; 
the three fronting Bar Harbor have been renamed, 



LAFAYETTE AND THE EAST 139 

for historic reasons, Cadillac Mountain, the Flying 
Squadron, and Champlain Mountain. For the same 
reason mountains upon Somes Sound have been re- 
named Acadia Mountain, St. Sauveur Mountain, and 
Norumbega Mountain, the last an Indian name; 
similar changes commemorating the early EngHsh oc- 
cupation also have been made in the nomenclature of 
the western group. Tablets and memorials are also 
projected in emphasis of the historical associations of 
the place. 

Both mountain groups are dotted with lakes; 
those of the western group are the largest of the island. 

The pleasures, then, of the Lafayette National 
Park cover a wide range of human desire. Sea bathing, 
boating, yachting, salt-water and fresh-water fishing, 
tramping, exploring the wilderness, hunting the view 
spots — these are the summer occupations of many 
visitors, the diversions of many others. The more 
thoughtful will find its historical associations fascinat- 
ing, its geological record one of the richest in the con- 
tinent, its forests well equipped schools for tree study, 
their branches a museum of bird Hfe. 

To climb these low mountains, wandering by the 
hour in their hollows and upon their sea-horizoned 
shoulders, is, for one interested in nature, to get very 
close indeed to the secrets of her wonderful east. One 
may stand upon Cadillac's rounded summit and let im- 
agination reaHze for him the day when this was a glac- 
iered peak in a mighty range which forged southward 
from the far north, shoulder upon shoulder, peak upon 



I40 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

peak, pushing ever higher as it approached the sea, and 
extending far beyond the present ocean horizon; for 
these mountains of Mount Desert are by no means 
the terminal of the original mighty range; the slow 
subsidence of the coast has wholly submerged several, 
perhaps many, that once rose south of them. The 
valley which now carries the St. Croix River drained 
this once towering range's eastern slopes; the valley 
of the Penobscot drained its western slopes. 

The rocks beneath his feet disclose not only this 
vision of the geologic past; besides that, in their slow 
decay, in the chiselling of the trickling waters, in the 
cleavage of masses by winter's ice, in the peeling of the 
surface by alternate freezing and melting, in the disso- 
lution and disintegration everywhere by the chemicals, 
imprisoned in air and water, all of which he sees be- 
neath his feet, they disclose to him the processes by 
which Nature has wrought this splendid ruin. And 
if, captivated by this vision, he studies intimately the 
page of history written in these rocks, he will find it 
full of fascinating detail. 

The region also offers an absorbing introduction 
to the study of our eastern flora. The exposed bogs 
and headlands support several hundred species of 
plants typical of the arctic, sub-arctic, and Hudsonian 
zones, together with practically all of the common 
plants of the Canadian zone, and many of the southern 
coasts. So with the trees. Essentially coastal, it is 
the land of conifers, the southern limit of some which 
are common in the great regions of the north, yet ex- 




FRENCHMAXS BAY FROM THE EAST CLIFF OF CHAM PLAIN MOUNTAIN 
Lafayette National Park 



LAFAYETTE AND THE EAST 141 

hibiting in nearly full variety the species for many 
miles south; yet it is also, in its sheltered valleys, re- 
markably representative of the deciduous growths of 
the entire Appalachian region. 

The bird life is full and varied. The food supply 
attracts migratory birds, and aquatic birds find here 
the conditions which make for increase. Deer are 
returning in some numbers from the mainland. 

In brief, the Lafayette National Park, small 
though it is, is one of the most important members of 
the national parks system. For the pleasure seeker 
no other provides so wide and varied an opportunity. 
To the student, no other offers a more readable or more 
distinctive volume; it is the only national museimi of 
the fascinating geology of the east, and I can think 
of no other place in the east where classes can find so 
varied and so significant an exhibit. To the artist, 
the poet, and the dreamer it presents vistas of ocean, 
inlet, fiord, shore, wave-lashed promontory, bog, 
meadow, forest, and mountain — an answer to every 
mood. 

If this nation, as now appears, must long lack na- 
tional parks representative of the range of its splendid 
east, let us be thankful that this one small park is so 
complete and so distinguished. 



THE VOLCANIC NATIONAL PARKS 



ON THE VOLCANO IN SCENERY 

THE volcanic national parks are Lassen Volcanic, 
Crater Lake, Mount Rainier, Yellowstone, and 
Hawaii. Though several of them exhibit extremely high 
mountains, their scenic ensemble differs in almost all 
respects from that of the granite parks. The landscape 
tends to broad elevated surfaces and rolling hills, from 
which rise sharp towering cones or massive mountains 
whose irregular bulging knobs were formed by out- 
breaks of lava upon the sides of original central vents. 

The Cascade Mountains in Washington, Oregon, 
and northern California are one of the best examples of 
such a landscape; from its low sweUing summits rise 
at intervals the powerful master cones of Shasta, 
Rainier, Adams, Hood, Baker, and others. Fuji- 
yama, the celebrated mountain of Japan, may be 
cited as a familiar example of the basic mountain form, 
the single-cone volcanic peak. Vesuvius is a familiar 
example of simple complication, the double-cone vol- 
cano, while Mauna Loa in Hawaii, including Kilauea 
of the pit of fire, a neighbor volcano which it has almost 
engulfed in its swollen bulk, well illustrates the vol- 
cano built up by outpourings of lava from vents broken 
through its sides. Flat and rolling Yellowstone with 
its geyser fields, is one of the best possible examples 
of a dead and much eroded volcanic region. 

The scenic detail of the volcanic landscape is in- 
teresting and different from any other. Centuries 

us 



146 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

and the elements create from lava a soil of great fer- 
tility. No forests and wild flowers excel those growing 
on the lavas of the Cascades, and the fertility of the 
Hawaiian Islands, which are entirely volcanic, is 
world-famous. Streams cut deep and often highly 
colored canyons in these broad lava lands, and wind 
and rain, while eroding valleys, often leave ornately 
modelled edifices of harder rock, and tall thin needles 
pointing to the zenith. 

In the near neighborhood of the volcanoes, as 
well as on their sloping sides, are found lava formations 
of many strange and wonderful kinds. Hot springs 
and bubbling paint pots abound; and in the Yellow- 
stone National Park, geysers. Fields of fantastic, 
twisted shapes, masses suggesting heaps of tumbled 
ropes, upstanding spatter cones, caves arched with 
lava roofs, are a very few of the very many phenomena 
which the climber of a volcano encounters on his way. 
And at the top, broad, bowl-shaped craters, whose 
walls are sometimes many hundred feet deep, enclose, 
if the crater has long been dormant, sandy floors, from 
which, perhaps, small cinder cones arise. If the crater 
still is active, the adventurer's experiences are limited 
only by his daring. 

The entire region, in short, strikingly differs from 
any other of scenic kind. 

Of the several processes of world-making, all of 
which are progressing to-day at normal speed, none is 
so thrilling as volcanism, because no other concen- 
trates action into terms of human grasp. Lassen 



THE VOLCANIC NATIONAL PARKS 147 

Peak's eruption of a thousand cubic yards of lava in a 
few hours thrills us more than the Mississippi's erosion 
of an average foot of her vast valley in a hundred thou- 
sand years; yet the latter is enormously the greater. 
The explosion of Mount Katmai, the rise and fall of 
Kilauea's boiHng lava, the playing of Yellowstone's 
monster geysers, the spectacle of Mazama's lake- 
filled crater, the steaming of the Cascade's myriad 
bubbling springs, all make strong appeal to the imagi- 
nation. They carry home the realization of mysteri- 
ous, overwhelming power. 

Lava is molten rock of excessively high tempera- 
ture, which suddenly becomes released from the fear- 
ful pressures of earth's interior. Hurled from vol- 
canic vents, or gushing from cracks in the earth's skin, 
it spreads rapidly over large neighborhoods, filling 
valleys and raising bulky rounded masses. 

Often it is soft and frothy, like pumice. Even in 
its frequent glass forms, obsidian, for example, it 
easily disintegrates. There are as many kinds of 
lava as there are kinds of rock from which it is formed. 

Volcanic scenery is by no means confined to what 
we call the volcanic national parks. Volcanoes were 
frequent in many parts of the continent. We meet 
their remnants unexpectedly among the granites of the 
Rockies and the Sierra, and the sedimentary rocks of 
the west and the southwest. Several of our national 
parks besides those prevailingly volcanic, and several 
of our most distinguished national monuments, ex- 
hibit interesting volcanic interludes. 



VII 

LASSEN PEAK AND MOUNT KATMAI 

The One a National Park in Northern California, 
THE Other a National Monument in Alaska 

BECAUSE most of the conspicuous volcanic erup- 
tions of our day have occurred in wanner chmes 
nearer the equator, we usually think of volcanoes as 
tropical, or semi-tropical, phenomena. Vesuvius is in 
the Mediterranean, Pelee in the Caribbean, Mauna 
Loa and Kilauea on the Hawaiian Islands. Of course 
there is Lassen Peak in CaUfornia — the exception, as 
we say, which proves the rule. 

As a fact, many of the world's greatest volcanoes 
are very far indeed from the tropics. Volcanoes result 
from the movement of earth masses seeking equiUb- 
rium underneath earth's crust, but near enough to the 
surface to enable molten rock under terrific pressure 
to work upward from isolated pockets and break 
through. Volcanoes occur in all latitudes. Even 
Iceland has its great volcano. It is true that the vol- 
cano map shows them congregating thickly in a broad 
band, of which the equator is the centre, but it also 
shows them bordering the Pacific Coast from Pata- 
gonia to Alaska, crossing the ocean through the Aleu- 
tian Islands, and extending far down the Asian coast. 
It also shows many inland volcanoes, isolated and in 

series. The distribution is exceedingly wide. 

148 



LASSEN PEAK AND MOUNT KATMAI 149 

Volcanoes usually occur in belts which may or 
may not coincide with lines of weakening in the earth's 
crust below. Hence the series of flaming torches of 
prehistoric days which, their fires now extinguished 
and their sides swathed in ice, have become in our day 
the row of spectacular peaks extending from northern 
CaUfomia to Puget Sound. Hence also the long range 
of threatening summits which skirts Alaska's southern 
shore, to-day the world's most active volcanic belt. 
Here it was that Katmai's summit was lost in the 
mighty explosion of June, 191 2, one of enormous 
violence, which followed tremendous eruptions else- 
where along the same coast, and is expected to be fol- 
lowed by others, perhaps of even greater immensity 
and power. 

These two volcanic belts contain each an acti\'e 
volcano which Congress has made the centre of a 
national reservation. Lassen Peak, some wuse men 
believe, is the last exhibit of activity in the d>^ng 
volcanism of the Cascade Mountains. Mount Kat- 
mai is the latest and greatest exhibit in a volcanic belt 
which is beHeved to be young and growing. 

The Building of the Cascades 

Millions of years ago, in the period which geolo- 
gists call Tertiary, the pressure under that part of the 
crust of the earth which now is Washington, Oregon, 
and northern CaUfomia, became too powerful for solid 
rock to withstand. Long lines of hills appeared parallel 
to the sea, and gradually rose hundreds, and perhaps 



I50 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

thousands, of feet. These cracked, and from the long 
summit-fissures issued hot lava, which spread over 
enormous areas and, cooling, laid the foundations for 
the coming Cascade Mountains. 

When the gaping fissures eased the pressure from 
beneath, they filled with ash and lava except at cer- 
tain vent holes, around which grew the volcanoes 
which, when their usefulness as chimneys passed, be- 
came those cones of ice and snow which now are the 
glory of our northwest. 

There may have been at one time many hundreds 
of these volcanoes, big and little. Most of them 
doubtless quickly perished under the growing slopes of 
their larger neighbors, and, as they became choked 
with ash, the lava which had been finding vent through 
them sought other doors of escape, and found them in 
the larger volcanoes. Thus, by natural selection, 
there survived at last that knightly company of mon- 
sters now imiformed in ice, which includes, from north 
to south, such celebrities as Mount Baker, Mount 
Rainier, Mount Adams, Mount St. Helens, Mount 
Hood, vanished Mount Mazama, Mount Shasta, and 
living Lassen Peak. 

Whether or not several of these vast beacons lit 
Pacific's nights at one time can never be known with 
certainty, but probability makes the claim. Whether 
or not in their dechne the canoes of prehistoric men 
found harbor by guidance of their pillars of fire by 
night, and their pillars of smoke by day is less proba- 
ble but possible. One at least of the giant band, 



LASSEN PEAK AND MOUNT KATMAI 151 

Lassen Peak, is semi-active to-day. At least two 
others, Mount Rainier and Mount Baker, ofifer evi- 
dences of internal heat beneath their mail of ice. And 
early settlers in the northwest report Lidian traditions 
of the awful cataclysm in which Mount Rainier lost 
two thousand feet of cone. 

Lassen Peak National Park 

Lassen Peak, the last of the Cascades in active 
eruption, rises between the northern end of the Sierra 
Nevada Mountains, of which it is locally but wrongly 
considered a part, and the Klamath Mountains, a 
spur of the Cascades. Actually it is the southern 
terminus of the Cascades. 

Though quiet for more than two hundred years, 
the region long has enjoyed scientific and popular 
interest because it possesses hot springs, mud vol- 
canoes and other minor volcanic phenomena, and par- 
ticularly because its cones, which are easily climbed 
and studied, have remained very nearly perfect. Be- 
sides Lassen Peak, whose altitude is 10,437 f^^t, there 
are others of large size and great interest close by. 
Prospect Peak attains the altitude of 9,200 feet; 
Harkness Peak 9,000 feet; and Cinder Cone, a speci- 
men of imusual beauty, 6,907 feet. 

Because it seemed desirable to conserve the best 
two of these examples of recent volcanism. President 
Taft in 1906 created the Lassen Peak and the Cinder 
Cone National Monuments. Doubtless there would 



152 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

have been no change in the status of these reserva- 
tions had not Lassen Peak broken its long sleep in the 
spring of 191 4 with a series of eruptions covering a pe- 
riod of nineteen months. This centred attention upon 
the region, and in August, 191 6, Congress created the 
Lassen Volcanic National Park, a reservation of a 
hundred and twenty -four square miles, which included 
both national monuments, other notable cones of the 
neighborhood, and practically all the hot springs and 
other lesser phenomena. Four months after the cre- 
ation of the national park Lassen Peak ceased activity 
with its two hundred and twelfth eruption. It is not 
expected to resume. For some years, however, sci- 
entists will continue to class it as semi-active. 

These eruptions, none of which produced any con- 
siderable lava flow, are regarded as probably the dying 
gasps of the volcanic energy of the Cascades. They 
began in May, 19 14, with sharp explosions of steam 
and smoke from the summit crater. The news aroused 
wide-spread interest throughout the United States; it 
was the first volcanic eruption within the national 
boundaries. During the following simamer there were 
thirty-eight slight similar eruptions, some of which 
scattered ashes in the neighborhood. The spectacle 
was one of magnificence because of the heavy columns 
of smoke. Eruptions increased in frequency with 
winter, fifty-six occurring during the balance of the 
year. 

About the end of March, 191 5, according to Doctor 
J. S. DiUer of the United States Geological Survey, 




h'lom a phiitojiiapli by J. S. Dillcr 

LASSEN PEAK SEEX FROM THE SOUTHWEST 
On the left is the m;itcri.il last erupted from the slope of the peak. It is called Chaos 




From ij plwlograph hy J, 5. Dillcr 

LASSEN PEAK CLOSE UP 

Showing the northeast slope as seen from Chaos 



LASSEN PEAK AND MOUNT KATMAI 153 

new lava had filled the crater and overflowed the west 
slope a thousand feet. On May 22 following occurred 
the greatest eruption of the series. A mushroom- 
shaped cloud of smoke burst four miles upward in air. 
The spectacle, one of grandeur, was plainly visible 
even from the Sacramento Valley. "At night," writes 
Doctor Diller, "flashes of hght from the mountain 
summit, flying rocket-Kke bodies and cloud-glows over 
the crater reflecting the Hght from incandescent lavas 
below, were seen by many observers from various points 
of view, and appear to indicate that much of the 
material erupted was sufficiently hot to be luminous." 

Another interesting phenomenon was the blast of 
superheated gas which swept down Lost Creek and 
Hot Creek Valleys. For ten miles it withered and 
destroyed every living thing in its path. Large trees 
were uprooted. Forests were scorched to a cinder. 
Snow-fields were instantly turned to water and flooded 
the lower valleys with rushing tides. 

Later examination showed that this explosion had 
opened a new fissure, and that the old and new craters, 
now joined in one, were filled with a lava fid. Follow- 
ing this, the eruptions steadily declined in violence till 
their close the following December. 

As a national park, though undeveloped and un- 
equipped as yet, Lassen has many charms besides its 
volcanic phenomena. Its western and southern slopes 
are thickly forested and possess fine lakes and streams. 
Several thousand persons, largely motorists, have vis- 
ited it yearly of late. There are hot springs at Drakes- 



154 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

bad, just within the southern border, which have local 
popularity as baths. The trout-fishing in lake and 
stream is excellent, and shooting is encouraged in the 
extensive national forest which surrounds the park, 
but not in the park itself, which is sanctuary. In spite 
of the hunting, deer are still found. 

The greatest pleasure, however, will be found in 
exploring the volcanoes, from whose summits views 
are obtainable of many miles of this tumbled and 
splendidly forested part of California and of the dry 
plains of the Great Basin on its east. 

The Katmai National Monument 

We turn from the dying flutter of California's 
last remaining active volcano to the excessive violence 
of a volcano in the extremely active Alaskan coast 
range. The Mount Katmai National Monument will 
have few visitors because it is inaccessible by anything 
less than an exploring-party. We know it principally 
from the reports of four expeditions by the National 
Geographic Society. Informed by these reports, Presi- 
dent Wilson created it a national monument in 1918. 

A remarkable volcanic belt begins in southern 
Alaska at the head of Cook Inlet, and foUows the coast 
in a broad southwesterly curve fifteen hundred miles 
long through the Alaskan Peninsula to the end of the 
Aleutian Islands, nearly enclosing Behring Sea. It is 
very ancient. Its mainland segment contains a dozen 
peaks, which are classed as active or latent, and its 
island segment many other volcanoes. St. Augustine's 



LASSEN PEAK AND MOUNT KATMAI 155 

eruption in 1883 was one of extreme violence. Kugak 
was active in 1889. Veniaminof's eruption in 1892 
ranked with St. Augustine's. Redoubt erupted in 
1902, and Katmai, with excessive violence, in June, 
191 2. The entire belt is alive with volcanic excite- 
ment. Pavlof , at the peninsula's end, has been steam- 
ing for years, and several others are under expectant 
scientific observation. Katmai may be outdone at 
any time. 

Katmai is a peak of 6,970 feet altitude, on treach- 
erous Shelikof Strait, opposite Kodiak Island. It rises 
from an inhospitable shore far from steamer routes or 
other recognized lines of travel. Until it announced 
itself with a roar which was heard at Juneau, seven 
hundred and fifty miles away, its very existence was 
probably unknown except to a few prospectors, fisher- 
men, geographers, and geologists. Earthquakes fol- 
lowed the blast, then followed night of smoke and 
dust. Darkness lasted sixty hours at Kodiak, a hun- 
dred miles away. Dust fell as far as Ketchikan, nine 
hundred miles away. Fumes were borne on the wind 
as far as Vancouver Island, fifteen hundred miles 
away. Weather Bureau reports noted haziness as 
far away as Virginia during succeeding weeks, and the 
extraordinary haziness in Europe during the following 
summer is noted by Doctor C. S. Abbott, Director of 
the Astrophysical Observatory of the Smithsonian 
Institution, in connection with this eruption. 

Nevertheless, Katmai's is by no means the great- 
est volcanic eruption. Katmai's output of ash was 



156 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

about five cubic miles. Several eruptions have greatly 
exceeded that in bulk, notably that of Tomboro, in the 
island of Sumbawa, near Java, in 1815, when more than 
twenty-eight cubic miles of ash were flung to the winds. 
Comparison with many great eruptions whose output 
was principally lava is of course impossible. 

The scene of this explosion is the national monu- 
ment of to-day. The hollowed shell of Katmai's 
summit is a spectacle of wonderment and grandeur. 
Robert F. Griggs, who headed the expeditions which 
explored it, states that the area of the crater is 8.4 
square miles, measured along the highest point of the 
rim. The abyss is 2.6 miles long, 7.6 miles in circum- 
ference, and 4.2 square miles in area. A lake has 
formed within it which is 1.4 miles long and nine- 
tenths of a mile wide. Its depth is unknown. The 
precipice from the lake to the highest point of the rim 
measures thirty-seven hundred feet. 

The most interesting exhibit of the Katmai Na- 
tional Monument, however, is a group of neighboring 
valleys just across the western divide, the principal one 
of which Mr. Griggs, with picturesque inaccuracy, 
named the "Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes"; for, 
from its floor and sides and the floors and sides of 
smaller tributary valleys, superheated steam issues in 
thousands of hissing columns. It is an appalling 
spectacle. The temperatures of this steam are ex- 
tremely high; Griggs reports one instance of 432 de- 
grees Centigrade, which would equal 948 degrees 
Fahrenheit; in some vents he found a higher tempera- 



LASSEN PEAK AND MOUNT KATMAI 157 

ture at the surface than a few feet down its throat. 
The very ground is hot. 

This phenomenal valley is not to be fully explained 
offhand; as Griggs says, there are many problems to 
work out. The steam vents appear to be very recent. 
They did not exist when Spurr crossed the valley in 
1898, and Martin heard nothing of them when he was 
in the near neighborhood in 1903 and 1904. The same 
volcanic impulse which found its main reHef in the ex- 
plosive eruption of near-by Katmai in 191 2 no doubt 
cracked the deep-lying rocks beneath this group of 
valleys, exposing super-heated rocks to subterranean 
waters which forthwith turned to steam and forced 
these vents for escape. Griggs reports that volcanic 
gases mingle freely with the steam. 

The waters may have one or more of several 
sources; perhaps they come from deep springs originat- 
ing in surface snows and rains; perhaps they seep in 
from the sea. Whatever their origin the region espe- 
cially interests us a^ a probably early stage of phenom- 
ena whose later stages find conspicuous examples in 
several of our national parks. Some day, with the 
cooling of the region, this may become the valley of 
ten thousand hot springs. 

But it is useful and within scientific probability 
to carry this conception much further. The com- 
parison between Katmai's steaming valleys and the 
geyser basin of Yellowstone is especially instructive 
because Yellowstone's basins doubtless once were 
what Katmai's steaming valleys are now. The "Val- 



158 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

ley of Ten Thousand Smokes" may well be a coming 
geyser-field of enormous size. The explanation is 
simple. Bunsen's geyser theory, now generally ac- 
cepted, presupposes a column of water filling the gey- 
ser vent above a deep rocky superheated chamber, in 
which entering water is being rapidly turned into 
steam. When this steam becomes plentiful enough 
and sufficiently compressed to overcome the weight of 
the water in the vent, it suddenly expands and hurls 
the water out. That is what makes the geyser play. 

Now one difiference between the Yellowstone gey- 
ser-fields and Katmai's steaming valleys is just a dif- 
ference in temperature. The entire depth of earth 
under these valleys is heated far above boiling-point, 
so that it is not possible for water to remain in the 
vents; it turns to steam as fast as it collects and 
rushes out at the top in continuous flow. But when 
enough thousands of centuries elapse for the rocks 
between the surface and the deep internal pockets 
to cool, the water will remain in many vents as water 
until, at regular intervals, enough steam gathers be- 
low to hurl it out. Then these valleys will become 
basins of geysers and hot springs like Yellowstone's. 



VIII 

MOUNT RAINIER, ICY OCTOPUS 

Mount Rainier National Park, West Central 
Washington. Area, 324 Square Miles 

I 

MOUNT RAINIER, the loftiest volcano within 
the boundaries of the United States, one of our 
greatest mountains, and certainly our most imposing 
mountain, rises from western central Washington to 
an altitude of 14,408 feet above mean tide in Puget 
Sound. It is forty-two miles in direct line from the 
centre of Tacoma, and fifty-seven miles from Seattle, 
from both of which its ghstening peak is often a promi- 
nent spectacle. With favoring atmospheric condi- 
tions it can be seen a himdred and fifty miles away. 

North and south of Rainier, the Cascade Moun- 
tains bear other snow-capped volcanic peaks. Baker 
rises 10,703 feet; Adams, 12,307 feet; St. Helens, 
9,697 feet; Hood, 11,225 feet, and Shasta, 14,162 
feet. But Rainier surpasses them all in height, bulk, 
and majesty. Once it stood 16,000 feet, as is indicated 
by the slopes leading up to its broken and flattened 
top. The supposition is that nearly two thousand 
feet of its apex were carried away in one or more 
explosive eruptions long before history, but possibly 
not before man; there are Indian traditions of a 

X59 



i6o THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

cataclysm. There were slight eruptions in 1843, 1854, 
1858, and 1870, and from the two craters at its sum- 
mit issue many jets of steam which comfort the chiUed 
climber. 

This immense sleeping cone is blanketed in ice. 
Twenty-eight well-defined glaciers flow down its 
sides, several of which are nearly six miles long. 
Imagining ourselves looking down from an airplane at 
a great height, we can think of seeing it as an enor- 
mous frozen octopus sprawling upon the grass, for its 
curving arms of ice, reaching out in all directions, 
penetrate one of the finest forests even of our north- 
west. The contrast between these cold glaciers and 
the luxuriantly wild-flowered and forest-edged meadows 
which border them as snugly as so many rippHng 
summer rivers affords one of the most deUghtful fea- 
tures of the Moimt Rainier National Park. Paradise 
Inn, for example, stands in a meadow of wild flowers 
between Rainier's icy front on the one side and the 
snowy Tatoosh Range on the other, with the Nis- 
qually Glacier fifteen minutes' walk away ! 

The casual tourist who has looked at the Snowy 
Range of the Rockies from the distant comfort of 
Estes Park, or the High Sierra from the dining-porch 
of the Glacier Point Hotel, receives an invigorating 
shock of astonishment at beholding Mount Rainier 
even at a distance. Its isolation gives it enormous 
scenic advantage. Mount Whitney of the Sierra, our 
loftiest summit, which overtops it ninety-three feet, 
is merely the climax in a tempestuous ocean of snowy 



MOUNT RAINIER, ICY OCTOPUS i6i 

neighbors which are only less lofty; Rainier towers 
nearly eight thousand feet above its surrounding 
mountains. It springs so powerfully into the air that 
one involuntarily looks for signs of Ufe and action. 
But no smoke rises from its broken top. It is still 
and helpless, shackled in bonds of ice. Will it remain 
bound ? Or will it, with due warning, destroy in a day 
the elaborate system of glaciers which countless cen- 
turies have built, and leave a new and different, and 
perhaps, after years of glacial recovery, even a more 
gloriously beautiful Mount Rainier than now? 

The extraordinary individuality of the American 
national parks, their difference, each from every other, 
is nowhere more marked than here. Single-peaked 
glacial systems of the size of Rainier's, of course, are 
found wherever mountains of great size rise in close 
masses far above the line of perpetual snow. The 
Alaskan Range and the Himalayas may possess many. 
But if there is anywhere another moimtain of approxi- 
mate height and magnitude, carrying an approximate 
glacier system, which rises eight thousand feet higher 
than its neighbors out of a parkland of lakes, forests, 
and wild-flower gardens, which Nature seems to have 
made especially for pleasuring, and the heart of which 
is reached in four hours from a large city situated upon 
transatlantic railway-lines, I have not heard of it. 

Seen a hundred miles away, or from the streets of 
Seattle and Tacoma, or from the motor-road approach- 
ing the park, or from the park itself, or from any of 
the many interglacier valleys, one never gets used to 



i62 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

the spectacle of Rainier. The shock of surprise, the 
instant sense of impossibiHty, ever repeats itself. The 
mountain assumes a thousand aspects which change 
with the hours, with the position of the beholder, and 
with atmospheric conditions. Sometimes it is fairy- 
like, sometimes threatening, always majestic. One is 
not surprised at the Indian's fear. Often Rainier 
withdraws his presence altogether behind the horizon 
mists; even a few miles away no hint betrays his ex- 
istence. And very often, shrouded in snow-storm or 
cloud, he is lost to those at his foot. 

Mysterious and compelling is this ghostly moun- 
tain to us who see it for the first time, imable to look 
long away while it remains in view. It is the same, 
old Washingtonians tell me, with those who have kept 
watching it every day of visibiHty for many years. 
And so it was to Captain George Vancouver when, 
first of white men, he looked upon it from the bridge 
of the Discovery on May 8, 1792. 

"The weather was serene and pleasant," he wrote 
under that date, "and the country continued to ex- 
hibit, between us and the eastern snowy range, the 
same luxuriant appearance. At its eastern extremity, 
mount Baker bore by compass N. 22 E.; the round 
snowy mountain, now forming its southern extremity, 
and which, after my friend Rear Admiral Rainier, I 
distinguished by the name of Mount Rainier, bore 
N. (S.) 42 E." 

Thus Mount Rainier was discovered and named 
at the same time, presumably on the same day. 




From <i pholoirapli by A. II. tianics 

SOUTHEAST SLOPE OF MOUXT RAIXIER 
The winding (jlacicr is the Cowlitz, (libraltar is the rock on the rif;ht near the summit 



MOUNT RAINIER, ICY OCTOPUS 163 

Eighteen days later, having followed "the inlet," 
meaning Puget Sound, to his point of nearest approach 
to the mountain, Vancouver wrote: 

"We found the inlet to terminate here in an ex- 
tensive circular compact bay whose waters washed the 
base of mount Rainier, though its elevated summit 
was yet at a very considerable distance from the 
shore, with which it was connected by several ridges 
of hills rising towards it with gradual ascent and much 
regularity. The forest trees and the several shades 
of verdure that covered the hills gradually decreased 
in point of beauty until they became invisible; when 
the perpetual clothing of snow commenced which 
seemed to form a horizontal line from north to south 
along this range of rugged mountains, from whose 
summit mount Rainier rose conspicuously, and seemed 
as much elevated above them as they were above the 
level of the sea; the whole producing a most grand, 
picturesque effect." 

Vancouver made no attempt to reach the moun- 
tain. Dreamer of great dreams though he was, how 
like a madhouse nightmare would have seemed to 
him a true prophecy of mighty engines whose Hke no 
human mind had then conceived, running upon roads 
of steel and asphalt at speeds which no human mind 
had then imagined, whirling thousands upon thou- 
sands of pleasure-seekers from the shores of that very 
inlet to the glistening mountain's flowered sides ! 

Just one century after the discovery, the Geologi- 
cal Society of America started the movement to make 



i64 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

Mount Rainier a national park. Within a year the 
American Association for the Advancement of Science, 
the National Geographic Society, the Appalachian 
Moimtain Club, and the Sierra Club joined in the 
memorialization of Congress. Six years later, in 1899, 
the park was created. 

II 

The principal entrance to the park is up the Nis- 
qually River at the south. Here entered the pioneer, 
James Longmire, many years ago, and the roads estab- 
Hshed by him and his fellows determined the direction 
of the first national-park development. Longmire 
Springs, for many years the nearest resort to the great 
mountain, lies just within the southern boundary. 
Beyond it the road follows the Nisqually and Paradise 
valleys, under glorious groves of pine, cedar, and hem- 
lock, along ravines of striking beauty, past waterfalls 
and the snout of the NisquaDy Glacier, finally to in- 
imitable Paradise Park, its inn, its hotel camp, and its 
public camping-grounds. Other centres of wilderness 
life have been since estabhshed, and the marvel- 
lous north side of the park wUl be opened by the con- 
struction of a northwesterly highway up the valley of 
the Carbon River; already a fine trail entirely aroimd 
the mountain connects these various points of devel- 
opment. 

But the southern entrance and Paradise Park will 
remain for many years the principal centre of explora- 
tion and pleasuring. Here begins the popular trail to 



MOUNT RAINIER, ICY OCTOPUS 165 

the summit. Here begin the trails to many of the 
finest view-points, the best-known falls, the most acces- 
sible of the many exquisite interglacier gardens. Here 
the NisquaUy Glacier is reached in a few minutes' walk 
at a point particularly adapted for ice-cUmbing, and 
the comfortable viewing of ice-falls, crevasses, caves, 
and other glacier phenomena grandly exhibited in 
fullest beauty. It is a spot which can have in the 
nature of things few equals elsewhere in scenic variety 
and grandeur. On one side is the vast glistening 
mountain ; on the other side the high serrated Tatoosh 
Range spattered with perpetual snow; in middle 
distance, details of long winding glaciers seamed with 
crevasses ; in the foreground gorgeous rolling meadows 
of wild flowers dotted and bordered with equally 
luxuriant and richly varied forest groves; from close-by 
elevations, a gorgeous tumbled wilderness of hills, 
canyons, rivers, lakes, and falls backgrounded by the 
Cascades and accented by distant snowy peaks; the 
whole pervaded by the ever-present mountain, always 
the same yet grandly different, from different points 
of view, in the detail of its glaciered sides. 

The variety of pleasuring is similarly very large. 
One can ride horseback round the mountain in a 
leisurely week, or spend a month or more exploring the 
greater wilderness of the park. One can tramp the 
trails on long trips, camping by the way, or vary a 
vacation with numerous short tramps. Or one can 
loaf away the days in dreamy content, with now and 
then a walk, and now and then a ride. Or one can 



i66 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

explore glaciers and climb minor mountains; the 
Tatoosh Range alone will furnish the stiff est as well 
as the most delightful climbing, with wonderful re- 
wards upon the jagged summits; while short climbs to 
points upon near-by snow-fields will afford coasting 
without sleds, an exciting sport, especially appreciated 
when one is young. In July, before the valley snows 
melt away, there is tobogganing and skiing within a 
short walk of the Inn. 

The leisurely tour afoot around the mountain, 
with pack-train following the trail, is an experience 
never to be forgotten. One passes the snouts of a 
score of glaciers, each producing its river, and sees the 
mountain from every angle, besides having a continu- 
ous panorama of the surrounding country, including 
Mount Adams, Mount St. Helens, Mount Baker, 
Tacoma, Seattle, Mount Olympus, the Pacific Ocean, 
and the Cascades from the Columbia to the interna- 
tional line. Shorter excursions to other beautiful park- 
lands offer a wide variety of pleasure. Indian Henry's 
Hunting Ground, Van Trump Park, Summerland, and 
others provide charm and beauty as well as fascinating 
changes in the aspect of the great mountain. 

Of course the ascent of the mountain is the ulti- 
mate objective of the climber, but few, comparatively, 
will attempt it. It is a feat in endurance which not 
many are physically fit to undertake, while to the un- 
fit there are no rewards. There is comparatively little 
rock-chmbing, but what there is will try wind and mus- 
cle. Most of the way is tramping up long snow-covered 







,f^M|^jM«^ >>c«.ita^rS 




B^'^'^^^^^ 


i 




1 


Ib^':^ 







MOUNT RAINIER, ICY OCTOPUS 167 

and ice-covered slopes, with little rest from the start 
at midnight to the return, if all goes well, before the 
following sundown. Face and hands are painted to 
protect against sunburn, and colored glasses avert 
snow-blindness. Success is so largely a matter of 
physical condition that many ambitious tourists are 
advised to practise awhile on the Tatoosh Range be- 
fore attempting the trip. 

"Do you see Pinnacle Peak up there?" they ask 
you. "If you can make that you can make Rainier. 
Better try it first." 

And many who try Pinnacle Peak do not make it. 

As with every very lofty moimtain the view from 
the summit depends upon the conditions of the mo- 
ment. Often Rainier's summit is lost in mists and 
clouds, and there is no view. Very often on the clear- 
est day clouds continually gather and dissipate; one 
is lucky in the particular time he is on top. Fre- 
quently there are partial views. Occasionally every 
condition favors, and then indeed the reward is great. 
S. F. Emmons, who made the second ascent, and after 
whom one of Rainier's greatest glaciers was named, 
stood on the smnmit upon one of those fortunate mo- 
ments. The entire mountain in all its inspiring detail 
lay at his feet, a wonder spectacle of first magnitude. 

"Looking to the more distant country," he wrote, 
"the whole stretch of Puget Sound, seeming Uke a 
pretty Httle lake embowered in green, could be seen 
in the northwest, beyond which the Olympic Moun- 
tains extend out into the Pacific Ocean. The Cascade 



i68 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

Mountains, lying dwarfed at our feet, could be traced 
northward into British Columbia and southward into 
Oregon, while above them, at comparatively regular 
intervals, rose the ghostlike forms of our companion 
volcanoes. To the eastward the eye ranged over 
hundreds of miles, over chain on chain of mountain 
ridges which gradually disappeared in the dim blue 
distance." 

Notwithstanding the rigors of the ascent parties 
leave Paradise Inn for the summit every suitable day. 
Hundreds make the ascent each summer. To the ex- 
perienced mountain-climber it presents no special diffi- 
culties. To the inexperienced it is an extraordinary 
adventure. Certainly no one knows his Mount Rainier 
who has not measured its gigantic proportions in units 
of his own endurance. 

The first successful ascent was made by General 
Hazard Stevens and P. B. Van Trump, both residents 
of Washington, on August 17, 1870. Starting from 
James Longmire's with Mr. Longmire himself as guide 
up the Nisqually Valley, they spent several days in 
finding the Indian Sluiskin, who should take them to 
the summit. With him, then, assuming Longmire's 
place, Stevens and Van Trump started on their great 
adventure. It proved more of an adventure than they 
anticipated, for not far below the picturesque falls 
which they named after Sluiskin, the Indian stopped 
and begged them to go no farther. From that 
compilation of scholarly worth, by Professor Edmond 
S. Meany, President of the Mountaineers, entitled 



MOUNT RAINIER, ICY OCTOPUS 169 

"Mount Rainier, a Record of Exploration," I quote 
General Stevens's translation of Sluiskin's protest: 

"Listen to me, my good friends," said Sluiskin, 
"I must talk with you. 

"Your plan to climb Takhoma is all foolishness. 
No one can do it and live. A mighty chief dwells 
upon the summit in a lake of fire. He brooks no 
intruders. 

"Many years ago my grandfather, the greatest 
and bravest chief of all the Yakima, climbed nearly to 
the summit. There he caught sight of the fiery lake 
and the infernal demon coming to destroy him, and 
fled down the mountain, glad to escape with his life. 
Where he failed, no other Indian ever dared make the 
attempt. 

"At first the way is easy, the task seems light. 
The broad snow-fields over which I have often hunted 
the mountain-goat offer an inviting path. But above 
them you will have to climb over steep rocks over- 
hanging deep gorges, where a misstep would hurl you 
far down — down to certain death. You must creep 
over steep snow-banks and cross deep crevasses where 
a mountain-goat would hardly keep his footing. You 
must climb along steep cliffs where rocks are continu- 
ally falling to crush you or knock you off into the bot- 
tomless depths. 

"And if you should escape these perils and reach 
the great snowy dome, then a bitterly cold and furious 
tempest will sweep you off into space like a withered 
leaf. But if by some miracle you should survive all 



1 70 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

these perils, the mighty demon of Takhoma will surely 
kill you and throw you into the fiery lake. 

"Don't you go. You make my heart sick when 
you talk of climbing Takhoma. You will perish if 
you try to climb Takhoma. You will perish and your 
people will blame me. 

"Don't go! Don't go! If you go I will wait 
here two days and then go to Olympia and teU your 
people that you perished on Takhoma. Give me a 
paper to them to let them know that I am not to 
blame for your death. My talk is ended." 

Except for the demon and his lake of fire, Sluiskin's 
portent of hardship proved to be a Hteral, even a mod- 
est, prophecy. At five o'clock in the evening, after 
eleven hours of struggle with precipices and glaciers, 
exhausted, chilled, and without food, they faced a 
night of zero gales upon the summit. The discovery 
of comforting steam-jets in a neighboring crater, the 
reality perhaps of Sluiskin's lake of fire, made the night 
livable, though one of suffering. It was afternoon of 
the following day before they reached camp and found 
an astonished Sluiskin, then, in fact, on the point of 
leaving to report their unfortunate destruction. 

Stevens and Van Trump were doubly pioneers, 
for their way up the mountain is, in general direction 
at least, the popular way to-day, greatly bettered since, 
however, by the short cuts and easier detours which 
have followed upon experience. 



MOUNT RAINIER, ICY OCTOPUS 171 

III 

Our four volcanic national parks exemplify four 
states of volcanic history. Lassen Peak is semiactive; 
Mount Rainier is dormant; Yellowstone is dead, and 
Crater Lake marks the spot through which a volcano 
collapsed and disappeared. Rainier's usefulness as a 
volcanic example, however, is lost in its supreme use- 
fulness as a glacial exhibit. The student of glaciers 
who begins here with the glacier in action, and then 
studies the effects of glaciers upon igneous rocks among 
the cirques of the Sierra, and upon sedimentary rocks 
in the Glacier National Park, will study the masters; 
which, by the way, is a tip for universities contem- 
plating summer field-classes. 

Upon the truncated top of Moimt Rainier, nearly 
three miles in diameter, rise two small cinder cones 
which form, at the junction of their craters, the moun- 
tain's rounded snow-covered summit. It is known as 
Columbia Crest. As this only rises four hundred feet 
above the older containing crater, it is not always 
identified from below as the highest point. Two com- 
manding rocky elevations of the old rim, Point Suc- 
cess on its southwest side, 14,150 feet, and Liberty 
Cap on its northwest side, 14,112 feet, appear to be, 
from the mountain's foot, its points of greatest alti- 
tude. 

Rainier's top, though covered with snow and ice, 
except in spots bared by internal heat, is not the 
source of its glaciers, although its extensive ice-fields 



172 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

flow into and feed several of them. The glaciers them- 
selves, even those continuous with the summit ice, 
really originate about four thousand feet below the 
top in cirques or pockets which are principally fed with 
the tremendous snows of winter, and the wind sweep- 
ings and avalanches from the summit. The Pacific 
winds are charged heavily with moisture which de- 
scends upon Rainier in snows of great depth. Even 
Paradise Park is snowed under from twelve to thirty 
feet. There is a photograph of a ranger cabin in 
February which shows only a slight snow-mound 
with a hole in its top which locates the hidden chim- 
ney. F. E. Matthes, the geologist, tells of a snow 
level of fifty feet depth in Indian Henry's Hunting 
Ground, one of Rainier' s most beautiful parks, in 
which the wind had sunk a crater-like hollow from the 
bottom of which emerged a chimney. These snows 
replenish the glaciers, which have a combined surface 
of forty-five square miles, along their entire length, in 
addition to making enormous accumulations in the 
cirques. 

Beginning then in its cirque, as a river often be- 
gins in its lake, the glacier flows downward, river-like, 
along a course of least resistance. Here it pours over 
a precipice in broken falls to flatten out in perfect 
texture in the even stretch below. Here it plunges 
down rapids, breaking into crevasses as the river in 
corresponding phase breaks into ripples. Here it rises 
smoothly over rocks upon its bottom. Here it strikes 
against a wall of rock and turns sharply. The parallel 




SLUISRIX RIDGE AND COLUMBIA CREST 




Fr,)m a photOiraph copyrii^lil hy A. II. H.inus 

MOLNT RAINIER SEEN FROM TACOMA 



MOUNT RAINIER, ICY OCTOPUS 173 

between the glacier and the river is striking and con- 
sistent, notwithstanding that the geologist for tech- 
nical reasons will quarrel with you if you picturesquely 
call your glacier a river of ice. Any elevated view- 
point will disclose several or many of these mighty 
streams flowing in snake-like curves down the moun- 
tainside, the greater streams swollen here and there 
by tributaries as rivers are swollen by entering creeks. 
And all eventually reach a point, determined by tem- 
perature and therefore not constant, where the river 
of ice becomes the river of water. 

Beginning white and pure, the glacier gradually 
clothes itself in rock and dirt. Gathering as it moves 
narrow edges of matter filched from the shores, later 
on it heaps these up upon its lower banks. They are 
lateral moraines. Two merging glaciers unite the 
material carried on their joined edges and form a 
medial moraine, a ribbon broadening and thickening 
as it descends; a glacier made up of several tributaries 
carries as many medial moraines. It also carries 
much unorganized matter fallen from the cliffs or 
scraped from the bottom. Approaching the snout, all 
these accumulations merge into one moraine; and so 
soiled has the ice now become that it is difficult to tell 
which is ice and which is rock. At its snout is an ice- 
cave far inside of which the resultant river origi- 
nates. 

But the glacier has one very important function 
which the river does not share. Far up at its begin- 
nings it freezes to the back wall of its cirque, and. 



174 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

moving forward, pulls out, or plucks out, as the ge- 
ologists have it, masses of rock which it carries away 
in its current. The resulting cavities in the back of 
the cirque fill with ice, which in its turn freezes fast 
and plucks out more rock. And presently the back 
wall of the cirque, undermined, falls on the ice and also 
is carried away. There is left a precipice, often sheerly 
perpendicular; and, as the process repeats itself, this 
precipice moves backward. At the beginning of this 
process, it must be understood, the glacier lies upon 
a tilted surface far more elevated than now when you 
see it in its old age, sunk deep in its self-dug trench; 
and, while it is plucking backward and breaking off an 
ever-increasing precipice above it, it is plucking down- 
ward, too. If the rock is even in structure, this down- 
ward cutting may be very nearly perpendicular, but 
if the rock lies in strata of varying hardness, shelves 
form where the harder strata are encountered because 
it takes longer to cut them through; in this way are 
formed the long series of steps which we often see in 
empty glacial cirques. 

By this process of backward and downward pluck- 
ing, the Carbon Glacier bit its way into the north side 
of the great volcano until it invaded the very founda- 
tions of the summit and created the Willis WaU which 
drops avalanches thirty-six hundred feet to the glacier 
below. WilUs WaU is nearly perpendicular because 
the lava rock at this point was homogeneous. But in 
the alternating shale and limestone strata of Glacier 
National Park, on the other hand, the glaciers of old 




Fi\-,n a photograph hy Asalicl Curlh 

MOUNT RAINIER AND PARADISE INN IN SUMMER 







I * 







X 




<«,' 

^8*. 



Fr,im <i j>hoto\:iiiph hy Jacobs 

\VI\ IKR PLEASURES AT I'AKADISE INN. MOUNT RAINIER 



MOUNT RAINIER, ICY OCTOPUS 175 

dug cirques of many shelves. The monster ice-streams 
which dug Glacier's mighty valleys have vanished, but 
often tiny remainders are still seen upon the cirques' 
topmost shelves. 

So we see that the glacier acquires its cargo of 
rock not only by scraping its sides and plucking it 
from the bottom of its cirque and valley, but by 
quarrying backward till undermined material drops 
upon it; all of this in fulfilment of Nature's purpose 
of wearing down the highlands for the upbuilding of 
the hollows. 

This is not the place for a detailed description of 
Mount Rainier's twenty-eight glaciers. A glance at 
the map will tell something of the story. Extending 
northeasterly from the summit will be seen the greatest 
unbroken glacial mass. Here are the Emmons and the 
Winthrop Glaciers, much the largest of all. This is 
the quarter farthest from the sun, upon which its rays 
strike at the flattest angle. The melting then is least 
here. But still a more potent reason for their larger 
mass is found in their position on the lee quarter of 
the peak, the prevailing winds whirling in the snow 
from both sides. 

The greater diversification of the other sides of 
the mountain with extruding cliffs, cleavers, and enor- 
mous rock masses tends strongly to scenic variety and 
grandeur. Some of the rock cleavers which divide 
glaciers stand several thousand feet in height, verita- 
ble fences. Some of the cliffs would be mountains of 
no mean size elsewhere, and around their sides pour 



176 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

mighty glacial currents, cascading to the depths below 
where again they may meet and even merge. 

The Nisqually Glacier naturally is the most cele- 
brated, not because of scenic superiority, but because 
it is the neighbor and the playground of the visiting 
thousands. Its perfect and wonderful beauty are not 
in excess of many others; and it is much smaller than 
many. The CowHtz Glacier near by exceeds it in 
size, and is one of the stateliest; it springs from a 
cirque below Gibraltar, a massive near-summit rock, 
whose well-deserved celebrity is due in some part to 
its nearness to the travelled summit trail. The point 
I am making is not in depreciation of any of the cele- 
brated sights from the southern side, but in emphasis 
of the fact that a hundred other sights would be as 
celebrated, or more celebrated, were they as well known. 
The Mount Rainier National Park at this writing is 
replete with splendors which are yet to be discovered 
by the greater travelling public. 

The great north side, for instance, with its mighty 
walls, its magnificently scenic glaciers, its lakes, can- 
yons, and enormous areas of flowered and forested 
pleasure-grounds, is destined to wide development; 
it is a national park in itself. Already roads enter to 
camps at the foot of great glaciers. The west side, 
also, with its four spectacular glaciers which pass un- 
der the names of Mowich and Tahoma, attains sublim- 
ity; it remains also for future occupation. 

Many of the minor phenomena, while common 
also to other areas of snow and ice, have fascination 



MOUNT RAINIER, ICY OCTOPUS 177 

for the visitor. Snow-cups are always objects of in- 
terest and beauty. Instead of reducing a snow sur- 
face evenly, the warm sun sometimes melts it in pat- 
terned cups set close together like the squares of a 
checker-board. These deepen gradually till they sug- 
gest a gigantic honeycomb, whose cells are sometimes 
several feet deep. In one of these, one summer day 
in the Sierra, I saw a stumbhng horse deposit his rider, 
a high official of one of our Western railroads; and 
there he sat helpless, hands and feet emerging from the 
top, until we recovered enough from laughter to help 
him out. 

Pink snow always arouses lively interest. A mi- 
croscopic plant, Protococcus nivalis, growing in occa- 
sional patches beneath the surface of old snow grad- 
ually emerges with a pink glow which sometimes 
covers acres. On the tongue its flavor suggests water- 
melon. No doubt many other microscopic plants 
thrive in the snow-fields and glaciers which remain in- 
visible for lack of color. Insects also inhabit these 
glaciers. There are several Thysanura, which suggest 
the sand-fleas of our seashores, but are seldom noticed 
because of their small size. More noticeable are the 
Mesenchytraeus, a slender brown worm, which attains 
the length of an inch. They may be seen in great 
numbers on the lower glaciers in the summer, but on 
warm days retreat well under the surface. 



178 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

IV 

The extraordinary forest luxuriance at the base 
of Mount Rainier is due to moisture and climate. The 
same heavy snowfalls which feed the glaciers store up 
water-supplies for forest and meadow. The winters 
at the base of the mountain are mild. 

The lower valleys are covered with a dense growth 
of fir, hemlock, and cedar. Pushing skyward in com- 
petition for the sunlight, trees attain great heights. 
Protected from winter's severity by the thickness of 
the growth, and from fire by the dampness of the soil, 
great age is assured, which means thick and heavy 
trunks. The Douglas fir, easily the most important 
timber-tree of western America, here reaches its two 
hundred feet in massive forests, while occasional indi- 
viduals grow two hundred and fifty to two hundred and 
seventy feet with a diameter of eight feet. The bark 
at the base of these monsters is sometimes ten inches 
thick. The western hemlock also reaches equal heights 
in competition for the Hght, with diameters of five feet 
or more. Red cedar, white pines of several varieties, 
several firs, and a variety of hemlocks complete the Hst 
of conifers. D eciduous trees are few and not important. 
Broad-leaved maples, cottonwoods, and alders are the 
principal species. 

Higher up the mountain-slopes the forests thin 
and lessen in size, while increasing in picturesqueness. 
The Douglas fir and other monsters of the lower levels 
disappear, their places taken by other species. At an 



MOUNT RAINIER, ICY OCTOPUS 179 

altitude of four thousand feet the Englemann spruce 
and other mountain-trees begin to appear, not in the 
massed ranks of the lower levels, but in groves border- 
ing the flowered opens. 

The extreme limit of tree growth on Mount Rai- 
nier is about seven thousand feet of altitude, above 
which one finds only occasional distorted, wind-tor- 
tured mountain-hemlocks. There is no weU-defined 
timber-Hne, as on other lofty mountains. Avalanches 
and snow-slides keep the upper levels swept and 
bare. 

The wdld-flower catalogue is too long to enumerate 
here. John Muir expresses the belief that no other 
subalpine floral gardens excel Rainier's in profusion 
and gorgeousness. The region differs Httle from other 
Pacific regions of similar altitude in variety of species; 
in luxuriance it is unsurpassed. 



According to Theodore Winthrop who visited the 
northwest in 1853 and published a book entitled "The 
Canoe and the Saddle," which had wide vogue at the 
time and is consulted to-day. Mount Rainier had its 
Indian Rip Van Winkle. The story was told him in 
great detail by Hamitchou, "a frowsy ancient of the 
Squallyamish." The hero was a wise and wily fisher- 
man and hunter. Also, as his passion was gain, he 
became an excellent business man. He always had 
salmon and berries when food became scarce and prices 



i8o THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

high. Gradually he amassed large savings in hiaqua, 
the little perforated shell which was the most valued 
form of wampum, the Indian's money. The richer he 
got the stronger his passion grew for hiaqua, and, when 
a spirit told him in a dream of vast hoards at the 
summit of Rainier, he determined to climb the moun- 
tain. The spirit was Tamanoiis, which, Winthrop ex- 
plains, is the vague Indian personification of the super- 
natural. 

So he threaded the forests and climbed the moun- 
tain's glistening side. At the summit he looked over 
the rim into a large basin in the bottom of which was 
a black lake surrounded by purple rock. At the lake's 
eastern end stood three monuments. The first was as 
tall as a man and had a head carved like a salmon; 
the second was the image of a camas-bulb; the two 
represented the great necessities of Indian life. The 
third was a stone elk's head with the antlers in velvet. 
At the foot of this monument he dug a hole. 

Suddenly a noise behind him caused him to turn. 
An otter clambered over the edge of the lake and 
struck the snow with its tail. Eleven others followed. 
Each was twice as big as any otter he had ever seen; 
their chief was four times as big. The eleven sat 
themselves in a circle around him; the leader climbed 
upon the stone elk-head. 

At first the treasure-seeker was abashed, but he 
had come to find hiaqua and he went on digging. At 
every thirteenth stroke the leader of the otters tapped 
the stone elk with his tail, and the eleven followers 



MOUNT RAINIER, ICY OCTOPUS i8i 

tapped the snow with their tails. Once they all 
gathered closer and whacked the digger good and hard 
with their tails, but, though astonished and badly 
bruised, he went on working. Presently he broke his 
elkhom pick, but the biggest otter seized another in 
his teeth and handed it to him. 

Finally his pick struck a flat rock with a hollow 
sound, and the otters all drew near and gazed into the 
hole, breathing excitedly. He lifted the rock and under 
it found a cavity filled to the brim with pure-white 
hiaqua, every shell large, unbroken and beautiful. All 
were hung neatly on strings. 

Never was treasure-quest so successful ! The ot- 
ters, recognizing him as the favorite of Tamanoiis, 
retired to a distance and gazed upon him respectfully. 

"But the miser," writes the narrator, "never 
dreamed of gratitude, never thought to hang a string 
from the buried treasure about the salmon and kamas 
tamanous stones, and two strings around the elk's 
head; no, all must be his own, all he could carry now, 
and the rest for the future." 

Greedily he loaded himself with the booty and 
laboriously climbed to the rim of the bowl prepared 
for the descent of the mountain. The otters, puffing 
in concert, plunged again into the lake, which at once 
disappeared under a black cloud. 

Straightway a terrible storm arose through which 
the voice of Tamanoiis screamed tauntingly. Black- 
ness closed around him. The din was horrible. Terri- 
fied, he threw back into the bowl behind him five 



i82 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

strings of hiaqua to propitiate Tamanoiis, and there 
followed a momentary lull, during which he started 
homeward. But immediately the storm burst again 
with roarings Hke ten thousand bears. 

Nothing could be done but to throw back more 
hiaqua. Following each sacrifice came another lull, 
followed in turn by more terrible outbreaks. And so, 
string by string, he parted with all his gains. Then he 
sank to the ground insensible. 

When he awoke he lay under an arbutus-tree in a 
meadow of camas. He was shockingly stiff and every 
movement pained him. But he managed to gather 
and smoke some dry arbutus-leaves and eat a few 
camas-bulbs. He was astonished to find his hair very 
long and matted, and himself bent and feeble. "Ta- 
manoiis," he muttered. Nevertheless, he was calm 
and happy. Strangely, he did not regret his lost 
strings of hiaqua. Fear was gone and his heart was 
filled with love. 

Slowly and painfully he made his way home. 
Everything was strangely altered. Ancient trees grew 
where shrubs had grown four days before. Cedars 
under whose shade he used to sleep lay rotting on the 
ground. Where his lodge had stood now he saw a new 
and handsome lodge, and presently out of it came a 
very old decrepit squaw who, nevertheless, through her 
wrinkles, had a look that seemed strangely familiar to 
him. Her shoulders were hung thick with hiaqua 
strings. She bent over a pot of boihng salmon and 
crooned: 



MOUNT RAINIER, ICY OCTOPUS 183 

" My old man has gone, gone, gone. 
My old man to Tacoma has gone. 
To hunt the elk he went long ago. 
When will he come down, down, down 
To salmon pot and me ? " 

*'He has come down," quavered the returned 
traveller, at last recognizing his wife. 

He asked no questions. Charging it all to the 
wrath of Tamanous, he accepted fate as he found it. 
After all, it was a happy fate enough in the end, for 
the old man became the Great Medicine-Man of his 
tribe, by whom he was greatly revered. 

The name of this Rip Van Winkle of Moimt Rainier 
is not mentioned in Mr. Winthrop's narrative. 



DC 

CRATER LAKE'S BOWL OF INDIGO 

Crater Lake National Park, Southwestern Oregon. 
Area, 249 Square Miles 

CRATER LAKE is in southwestern Oregon 
among the Cascade Mountains, and is reached 
by an automobile ride of several hours from Medford. 
The government information circular calls it "the 
deepest and bluest lake in the world." Advertising 
circulars praise it in choicest professional phrase. 
Its beauty is described as exceeding that of any other 
lake in all the world. Never was blue so wonderful 
as the blue of these waters; never were waters so deep 
as its two thousand feet. 

Lured by this eloquence the traveller goes to Crater 
Lake and finds it all as promised — in fact, far better 
than promised, for the best intended adjectives, even 
when winged by the energetic pen of the most talented 
ad writer, cannot begin to convey the glowing, chang- 
ing, mysterious loveliness of this lake of unbelievable 
beauty. In fact, the tourist, with expectation at fever- 
heat by the time he steps from the auto-stage upon 
the crater rim, is silenced as much by astonishment 
as by admiration. 

Before him lies a crater of pale pearly lava several 
miles in diameter. A thousand feet below its rim is a 

lake whose farthest blues vie in delicacy with the 

184 



CRATER LAKE'S BOWL OF INDIGO 185 

horizon lavas, and deepen as they approach till at his 
feet they turn to almost black. There is nothing with 
which to compare the near-by blue looked sharply 
down upon from Crater's rim. The deepest indigo 
is nearest its intensity, but at certain angles falls far 
short. 

Nor is it only the color which affects him so 
strongly; its kind is something new, startHng, and 
altogether lovely. Its surface, so magically framed 
and tinted, is broken by fleeting silver wind-streaks 
here and there; otherwise, it has the vast stillness 
which we associate with the Grand Canyon and the sky 
at night. The lava walls are pearly, faintly blue afar 
off, graying and daubed with many colors nearer by. 
Pinks, purples, brick-reds, sulphurs, orange-yellows 
and many intermediates streak and splash the fore- 
ground gray. And often pine-green forests fringe the 
rim, and funnel down sharply tilted canyons to the 
water's edge; and sometimes shrubs of livelier green 
find foothold on the gentler slopes, and, spreading, 
paint bright patches. Over all, shutting down and 
around it Uke a giant bowl, is a sky of Califomian blue 
overhead softening to the pearl of the horizon. A 
wonder spectacle indeed ! 

And then our tourist, recovering from his trance, 
walks upon the rim and descends the trail to the 
water's edge to join a launch-party around the lake. 
Here he finds a new and different experience which is 
quite as sensational as that of his original discovery. 
Seen close by from the lake's surface these tinted lava 



i86 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

clijQfs are carved as grotesquely as a Japanese ivory. 
Precipices rise at times two thousand feet, sheer as a 
wall. Elsewhere gentle slopes of powdery lava, moss- 
tinted, connect rim and water with a ruler line. And 
between these two extremes are found every fashion 
and kind and degree of lava wall, many of them pre- 
cipitous, most of them rugged, aU of them contorted 
and carved in the most fantastic manner that imagina- 
tion can picture. Caves open their dark doors at 
water's edge. Towered rocks emerge from submerged 
reefs. A mimic volcano rises from the water near one 
side. Perpetual snow fills sheltered crevices in the 
southern rim. 

And all this wonder is reflected, upside down, in 
the still mirror through which the launch ploughs its 
rapid way. But looking backward where the inverted 
picture is broken and tossed by the waves from the 
launch's prow, he looks upon a kaleidoscope of color 
which he will remember all his Hfe; for, to the gorgeous 
disarray of the broken image of the cliffs is added the 
magic tint of this deep-dyed water, every wavelet of 
which, at its crest, seems touched for the fraction of a 
second with a flash of indigo; the whole dancing, spar- 
kling, shimmering in a glory which words cannot 
convey; and on the other side, and far astern, the 
subsiding waves calming back to normal in a flare of 
robin's-egg blue. 

Our tourist returns to the rim-side hotel to the 
ceremony of sunset on Crater Lake, for which the lake 
abandons all traditions and clothes itself in gold and 



CRATER LAKE'S BOWL OF INDIGO 187 

crimson. And in the morning after looking, before 
sunrise, upon a Crater Lake of hard-polished steel 
from which a faUing rock would surely bounce and 
bound away as if on ice, he breakfasts and leaves with- 
out another look lest repetition dull his priceless mem- 
ory of an emotional experience which, all in all, can 
never come again the same. 

It is as impossible to describe Crater Lake as it is 
to paint it. Its outlines may be photographed, but 
the photograph does not tell the story. Its colors may 
be reproduced, but the reproduction is not Crater 
Lake. More than any other spot I know, except the 
Grand Canyon from its rim, Crater Lake seems to con- 
vey a glory which is not of line or mass or color or 
compositio-n, but which seems to be of the spirit. No 
doubt this vivid impression which the stilled observer 
seems to acquire with his mortal eye, is bom some- 
how of his own emotion. Somehow he finds himself 
in communion with the Infinite. Perhaps it is this 
quahty which seems so mysterious that made the 
Klamath Indians fear and shun Crater Lake, just as 
the Indians of the great plateau feared and shunned 
the Grand Canyon. It is this intangible, seemingly 
spiritual quahty which makes the lake impossible 
either to paint or to describe. 

So different is this spectacle from anything else 
upon the continent that the first question asked 
usually is how it came to be. The answer discloses 
one of the most dramatic incidents in the history of 
the earth. 



i88 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

In the evolution of the Cascades, many have been 
the misadventures of volcanoes. Some have been 
buried alive in ash and lava, and merged into con- 
quering rivals. Some have been buried in ice which 
now, organized as glaciers, is wearing down their sides. 
Some have died of starvation and passed into the hills. 
Some have been blown to atoms. Only one in America, 
so far as known, has returned into the seething gulf 
which gave it birth. That was Mount Mazama. 

The processes of creation are too deHberate for 
human comprehension. The Mississippi takes five 
thousand years to lower one inch its valley's surface. 
The making of Glacier National Park required many — 
perhaps hundreds — of millions of years. It seems 
probable that the cataclysm in which Mount Mazama 
disappeared was exceptional; death may have come 
suddenly, even as expressed in human terms. 

What happened seems to have been this. Some 
foundation underpinning gave way in the molten gulf 
below, and the vast moimtain sank and disappeared 
within itself. Imagine the spectacle who can ! Mount 
Mazama left a clean-cut rim surrounding the hole 
through which it slipped and vanished. But there was 
a surging back. The eruptive forces, rebounding, 
pushed the shapeless mass again up the vast chimney. 
They foimd it too heavy a load. Deep within the ash- 
choked vent burst three small craters, and that was 
all. Two of these probably were short-lived, the third 
lasted a little longer. And, centuries later, spring 
water seeped through, creating Crater Lake. 



CRATER LAKE'S BOWL OF INDIGO 189 

Crater Lake is set in the summit of the Cascade 
Range, about sixty-five miles north of the CaHfomia 
boundary. The road from the railway-station at Med- 
ford leads eighty miles eastward up the picturesque 
volcanic valley of the Rogue River. The country is 
magnificently forested. The mountains at this point 




CROSS-SECTION OF CRATER LAKE SHOWING PROBABLE OUTLINE OF 
MOUNT MAZAMA 

are broad, gently rolling plateaus from which suddenly 
rise many volcanic cones, which, seen from elevated 
opens, are picturesque in the extreme. Each of these 
cones is the top of a volcano from whose summit has 
streamed the prehistoric floods of lava which have 
filled the intervening valleys, raising and levelling the 
country. 

Entering the park, a high, broad, forested eleva- 
tion is quickly encountered which looks at a glance 
exactly what it is, the base which once supported a 
towering cone. At its summit, this swelling base is 
found to be the outside supporting wall of a roughly 
circular lake, about five miles in diameter, the inside 
wall of which is steeply inclined to the water's surface 
a thousand feet below. The strong contrast between 
the outer and inner waUs tells a plainly read story. 



iQo THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

The outer walls, all around, slope gently upward at an 
angle of about fifteen degrees; naturally, if carried on, 
they would converge in a peaked summit higher than 
that of Shasta. The inner walls converge downward 
at a steep angle, suggesting a funnel of enormous depth. 
It was through this funnel that Mount Mazama, as 
men call the volcano that man never saw, once collapsed 
into the gulf from which it had emerged. 

Studying the scene from the Lodge on the rim 
where the automobile-stage has left you, the most vivid 
impressions of detail are those of the conformation of 
the inner rim, the cliffs which rise above it, and the 
small volcano which emerges from the blue waters of 
the lake. 

The marvellous inner slope of the rim is not a con- 
tinuous cliff, but a highly diversified succession of 
strata. Examination shows the layers of volcanic 
conglomerate and lava of which, like layers of brick 
and stone, the great structure was built. The down- 
ward dip of these strata away from the lake is every- 
where discernible. The volcano's early story thus Hes 
plain to eyes trained to read it. The most interesting 
of these strata is the lava flow which forms twelve 
thousand feet of the total precipice of Llao Rock, a 
prominence of conspicuous beauty. 

Many of these cliffs are magnificently bold. The 
loftiest is Glacier Peak, which rises almost two thou- 
sand feet above the water's surface. But Button Cliff 
is a close rival, and Yidse Cliff, Garfield Peak, Llao 
Rock, and the Watchman fall close behind. Offsetting 




From a photograph copyright by Scenic America Company 

BUTTON CLIFF AND THE PHANTOM SHIP, CRATER LAKE 




From a photograph copyright by Scenic America Company 

SUNSET FROM GARFIEI,n PEAK, CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK 



CRATER LAKE'S BOWL OF INDIGO 191 

these are breaks where the rim drops within six hundred 
feet of the water. The statement of a wall height of a 
thousand feet expresses the general impression, though 
as an average it is probably well short of the fact. 

At the foot of all the walls, at water's edge, lie 
slopes of talus, the rocky fragments which erosion has 







^ ^^^.-.-^^^/-^ 


^ WKtt-W^V^ 


-^"V. 






"■"■"^^ 


_^ 







CROSS-SECTION OF CRATER LAKE 



broken loose and dropped into the abyss. Nowhere 
is there a beach. The talus shallows the water for a 
few hundred feet, and descending streams build small 
deltas. These shallows edge the intense blue of the 
depths with exquisite Hghter tints which tend to green. 
But this edging is very narrow. 

The next most striking object after the gigantic 
carven cliffs is Wizard Island. This complete volcano 
in miniature, notwithstanding that it is forest-clothed 
and rises from water, carries the traveller's mind in- 
stantly to the thirteen similar cones which rise within 
the enormous desert crater of dead Haleakala, in the 
Hawaii National Park. Wizard Island's crater may 
easily be seen in the tip of its cone. Its two fellow 
volcanoes are invisible four hundred feet under water. 

Scanning the blue surface, one's eye is caught by 
an interesting sail-like rock rising from the waters on 
the far right close to the foot of Dutton Cliff. This 
is the Phantom Ship. Seen two miles away in certain 



192 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

lights the illusion is excellent. The masts seem to 
tilt rakishly and the sails shine in the sun. There 
are times when the Phantom Ship suddenly disappears, 
and times again when it as suddenly appears where 
nothing was before. Hence its name and mysterious 
repute. But there is nothing really mysterious about 
this ghostly behavior, which occurs only when the 
heated atmosphere lends itself readily to mirage. 

Days and weeks of rare pleasure may be had in 
the exploration of these amazing walls, a pleasure 
greatly to be enhanced by discovering and studying 
the many plain evidences of Mazama's slow upbuilding 
and sudden extinction. The excellent automobile 
road around the rim affords easy approach afoot as 
well as by automobile and bicycle. Its passage is 
enlivened by many inspiring views of the outlying 
Cascades with their great forests of yellow pine and 
their lesser volcanic cones, some of which, within and 
without the park boundaries, hung upon the flanks of 
Mount Mazama while it was belching flame and ash, 
while others, easing the checked pressure following the 
great catastrophe, were formed anew or enlarged from 
older vents. 

From this road any part of the fantastic rim may 
be reached and explored, often to the water's edge, 
by adventurous climbers. What more enjoyable day's 
outing, for instance, than the exploration of the splen- 
did pile of pentagonal basaltic columns suspended half- 
way in the rim at one point of picturesque beauty? 
What more inspiring than the cHmbing of Dutton 



CRATER LAKE'S BOWL OF INDIGO 193 

Cliff, or, for experienced climbers, of many of the 
striking lava spires? The only drawback to these 
days of happy wandering along this sculptured and 
painted rim is the necessity of carrying drinking-water 
from the Lodge. 

Then there are days of pleasure on the water. 
Wizard Island may be thoroughly explored, with 
luncheon under its trees by the lakeside. The Phan- 
tom Ship's gnarled lavas may be examined and cHmbed. 
Everywhere the steep rocky shore invites more in- 
timate acquaintance; its caves may be entered, some 
afoot, at least one afloat. The lake is well stocked 
with rainbow trout, some of them descendants of the 
youngsters which Will G. Steel laboriously carried 
across country from Gordon's Ranch, forty-nine miles 
away, in 1888. They are caught with the fly from 
shore and boat. A pound trout in Crater Lake is a 
small trout. Occasionally a monster of eight or ten 
pounds is carried up the trail to the Lodge. 

During all these days and weeks of pleasure and 
study, the vision of ancient Mount Mazama and its 
terrible end grows more and more in the enlightened 
imagination. There is much in the conformation of 
the base to justify a rather definite picture of this lost 
brother of Hood, Shasta, St. Helens, and Rainier. At 
the climax of his career, Mazama probably rose six- 
teen thousand feet above the sea, which means ten 
thousand feet above the level of the present lake. We 
are justified too in imagining his end a cataclysm. 
Volcanic upbuildings are often spasmodic and slow, 



194 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

a series of impulses separated by centuries of quies- 
cence, but their climaxes often are sudden and exces- 
sively violent. It seems more probable that Mazama 
collapsed during violent eruption. Perhaps like a 
stroke of Hghtning at the moment of triumph, death 
came at the supreme cHmax of his career. 

Certainly no mausoleum was ever conceived for 
human hero which may be compared for a moment 
with this glorified grave of dead Mazama ! 

The human history of Crater Lake has its inter- 
est. The Indians feared it. John W. Hillman was 
the first white man to see it. Early in 1853 a party of 
CaHfomian miners ascended the Rogue River to re- 
discover a lost gold-mine of fabulous richness. The 
expedition was secret, but several Oregonians who sus- 
pected its object and meant to be in at the finding, 
quickly organized and followed. HiUman was of this 
party. The Califomians soon learned of the pursuit. 

"Then," wrote Hillman half a century later, "it 
was a game of hide and seek until rations on both sides 
got low. The CaHfomians would push through the 
brush, scatter, double backward on their trail, and 
then camp in the most inaccessible places to be found, 
and it sometimes puzzled us to locate and camp near 
enough to watch them." 

Eventually the rivals united. A combination 
search-party was chosen which included Hillman, and 
this party, while it found no gold-mine, found Crater 
Lake. 

"While riding up a long sloping mountain," Hill- 



CRATER LAKE'S BOWL OF INDIGO 195 

man continued, "we suddenly came in sight of water 
and were very much surprised as we did not expect to 
see any lakes. We did not know but what we had 
come in sight and close to Klamath Lake, and not until 
my mule stopped within a few feet of the rim of Crater 
Lake did I look down, and if I had been riding a blind 
mule I firmly believe I would have ridden over the edge 
to death and destruction. . . . 

"The finding of Crater Lake," he concludes, "was 
an accident, as we were not looking for lakes; but the 
fact of my being the first upon its banks was due to 
the fact that I was riding the best saddle mule in 
southern Oregon, the property of Jimmy Dobson, 
a miner and packer with headquarters at Jackson- 
ville, who had furnished me the mule in consideration 
of a claim to be taken in his name should we be suc- 
cessful. Stranger to me than our discovery was the 
fact that after our return I could get no acknowledg- 
ment from any Indian, buck or squaw, old or young, 
that any such lake existed ; each and every one denied 
any knowledge of it, or ignored the subject com- 
pletely." 

The next development in Crater's history intro- 
duces Will G. Steel, widely known as "the Father of 
Crater Lake National Park," a pioneer of the highest 
type, a gold-seeker in the coast ranges and the Klon- 
dike, a school-teacher for many years, and a public- 
spirited enthusiast. In 1869, a farmer's boy in Kan- 
sas, he read a newspaper account of an Oregon lake 
with precipice sides five thousand feet deep. Moving 



196 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

to Oregon in 1871, he kept making inquiries for seven 
years before he verified the fact of the lake's existence, 
and it was two years later before he found a man who 
had seen it. This man's description decided him to 
visit it, then an undertaking of some difficulty. 

He got there in 1885. Standing on the rim he 
suggested to Professor Joseph Le Conte that an effort 
be made to induce the national government to save it 
from defacement and private exploitation. Return- 
ing home they prepared a petition to President Cleve- 
land, who promptly withdrew ten townships from 
settlement pending a bill before Congress to create a 
national park. Congress refused to pass the bill on 
the ground that Oregon should protect her own lake. 
Then Steel began an effort, or rather an unbroken 
succession of efforts, to interest Congress. For seven- 
teen years he agitated the project at home, where he 
made speeches winter and summer all over the State, 
and at Washington, which he deluged with letters and 
circulars. Finally the bill was passed. Crater Lake 
became a national park on May 22, 1902. 

Mr. Steel's work was not finished. He now began 
just as vigorous a campaign to have the lake properly 
stocked with trout. It required years but succeeded. 
Then he began a campaign for funds to build a road 
to the lake. This was a stubborn struggle which car- 
ried him to Washington for a winter, but it finally 
succeeded. 

During most of this time Mr. Steel was a country 
school-teacher without other personal income than his 



CRATER LAKE'S BOWL OF INDIGO 197 

salary. He spent many of his summers talking Crater- 
Lake projects to audiences in every part of the State, 
depending upon his many friends for entertainment 
and for "hfts" from town to town. He was superin- 
tendent of the park from 19 13 to the winter of 1920, 
when he became United States commissioner for the 
park. 

The attitude of the Indians toward Crater Lake 
remains to be told. Steel is authority for the statement 
that previous to 1886 no modem Indian had looked 
upon its waters. Legends inherited from their an- 
cestors made them greatly fear it. I quote 0. C. 
Applegate's "Klamath Legend of La-o," from Steel 
Points for January, 1907: 

"According to the mythology of the Klamath and 
Modoc Indians, the chief spirit who occupied the mys- 
tic land of Gaywas, or Crater Lake, was La-o. Under 
his control were many lesser spirits who appeared to 
be able to change their forms at will. Many of these 
were monsters of various kinds, among them the giant 
crawfish (or dragon) who could, if he chose, reach up 
his mighty arms even to the tops of the cliffs and 
drag down to the cold depths of Crater Lake any too 
venturesome tourist of the primal days. 

"The spirits or beings who were under the con- 
trol of La-o assumed the forms of many animals of the 
present day when they chose to go abroad on dry 
land, and this was no less true of the other fabulous 
inhabitants of Klamath land who were dominated by 
other chief spirits, and who occupied separate locaH- 



198 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

ties; all these forms, however, were largely or solely 
subject to the will of Komookumps, the great spirit. 

"Now on the north side of Mount Jackson, or 
La-o Yaina (La-o's Mountain), the eastern escarp- 
ment of which is known as La-o Rock, is a smooth field 
sloping a Httle toward the north which was a common 
playground for the fabled inhabitants of Gaywas and 
neighboring communities. 

"Skell was a mighty spirit whose realm was the 
Klamath Marsh country, his capital being near the 
Yamsay River on the eastern side of the marsh. He 
had many subjects who took the form of birds and 
beasts when abroad on the land, as the antelope, the 
bald eagle, the bliwas or golden eagle, among them 
many of the most sagacious and active of all the beings 
then upon the earth. 

"A fierce war occurred between Skell and La-o 
and their followers, which raged for a long time. 
Finally Skell was stricken down in his own land of 
Yamsay and his heart was torn from his body and 
was carried in triumph to La-o Yaina. Then a great 
gala day was declared and even the followers of Skell 
were allowed to take part in the games on Mount 
Jackson, and the heart of SkeU was tossed from hand 
to hand in the great ball game in which all participated. 

"If the heart of Skell could be borne away so that 
it could be restored to his body he would live again, 
and so with a secret understanding among themselves 
the followers of SkeU watched for the opportunity to 
bear it away. Eventually, when it reached the hands 



CRATER LAKE'S BOWL OF INDIGO 199 

of Antelope, he sped away to the eastward like the 
wind. When nearly exhausted, he passed it on to 
Eagle, and he in turn to Bliwas, and so on, and although 
La-o's followers pursued with their utmost speed, they 
failed to overtake the swift bearers of the precious 
heart. At last they heard the far-away voice of the 
dove, another of SkeU's people, and then they gave up 
the useless pursuit. 

"SkeU's heart was restored and he lived again, 
but the war was not over and finally La-o was himself 
overpowered and slain and his bleeding body was borne 
to the La-o Yaina, on the very verge of the great 
cliff, and a false message was conveyed to La-o's mon- 
sters in the lake that Skell had been killed instead of 
La-o, and, when a quarter of the body was thrown 
over, La-o's monsters devoured it thinking it a part 
of Skell's body. Each quarter was thrown over in 
turn with the same result, but when the head was 
thrown into the lake the monsters recognized it as the 
head of their master and would not touch it, and so it 
remains to-day, an island in the lake, to all people 
now known as Wizard Island." 

In 1885, at Fort Klamath, Steel obtained from 
Allen David, the white-headed chief of the Klamath 
Indians, the story of how the Indians returned to 
Crater Lake. It was "long before the white man ap- 
peared to drive the native out." Several Klamaths 
while hunting were shocked to find themselves on the 
lake rim, but, gazing upon its beauty, suddenly it was 
revealed to them that this was the home of the Great 



200 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

Spirit. They silently left and camped far away. But 
one brave under the speU of the lake returned, looked 
again, built his camp-fire and slept. The next night he 
returned again, and still again. Each night strange 
voices which charmed him rose from the lake; mysteri- 
ous noises filled the air. Moons waxed and waned. 
One day he cHmbed down to the water's edge, where 
he saw creatures "Hke in aU respects to Klamath 
Indians " inhabiting the waters. Again and again he 
descended, bathed, and soon began to feel mysteriously 
strong, "stronger than any Indian of his tribe because 
of his many visits to the waters." 

Others perceiving his growing power ventured also 
to visit the lake, and, upon bathing in its waters also 
received strength. 

"On one occasion," said David solemnly, '^the 
brave who first visited the lake killed a monster, or 
fish, and was at once set upon by imtold numbers of 
excited Llaos (for such they were called), who carried 
him to the top of the chffs, cut his throat with a stone 
knife, then tore his body into small pieces which were 
thrown down to the waters far beneath and devoured 
by angry Llaos." 

In 1886 two Klamaths accompanied Captain 
Clarence E. Button's Geological Survey party to Crater 
Lake and descended to the water's edge. The news 
of the successful adventure spread among the Indians, 
and others came to look upon the forbidden spot. 
That was the beginning of the end of the superstition. 
Steel says that two hundred Klamaths camped upon 



CRATER LAKE'S BOWL OF INDIGO 201 

the rim in 1896, while he was there with the Maza- 

mas. 

The lake was variously named by its eariy visitors. 
The Hillman party which discovered it named it 
Deep Blue Lake on the spot. Later it was known as 
Lake Mystery, Lake Majesty, and Hole in the Ground. 
A party from Jacksonville named it Crater Lake on 
August 4, 1869. 



X 

YELLOWSTONE, A VOLCANIC INTERLUDE 

The Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, North- 
western Wyoming. Area, 3,348 Square Miles 

I 

JOHN COULTER'S story of hot springs at the 
upper waters of the Yellowstone River was laughed 
at by the pubhc of 1810. Jim Bridger's account of the 
geysers in the thirties made his national reputation 
as a liar. Warren Angus Ferris's description of the 
Upper Geyser Basin was received in 1842 in unbeliev- 
ing silence. Later explorers who sought the Yellow- 
stone to test the truth of these tales thought it whole- 
some to keep their findings to themselves, as maga- 
zines and newspapers refused to publish their accounts 
and lecturers were stoned in the streets as impostors. 
It required the authority of the semiofficial Washbum- 
Langford expedition of 1869 to establish credence. 

The original appeal of the Yellowstone, that to 
wonder, remains its most popular appeal to-day, 
though science has dissipated mystery these many 
years. Many visitors, I am persuaded, enjoy the 
wonder of it more even than the spectacle. I have 
heard people refuse to listen to the explanation of 
geyser action lest it lessen their pleasure in Old Faith- 
ful. I confess to moods in which I want to see the blue 



YELLOWSTONE 203 

flames and smell the brimstone which Jim Bridger 
described so eloquently. There are places where it is 
not hard to imagine both. 

For many years the uncanny wonders of a dying 
volcanic region absorbed the public mind to the ex- 
clusion of all else in the Yellowstone neighborhood, 
which Congress, principally in consequence of these 
wonders, made a national park in 1872. Yet all the 
time it possessed two other elements of distinction 
which a later period regards as equal to the volcanic 
phenomena; elements, in fact, of such distinction that 
either one alone, without the geysers, would have 
warranted the reservation of so striking a region for 
a national park. One of these is the valley of the 
Yellowstone River with its spectacular waterfalls and 
its colorful canyon. The other is its population of 
wild animals which, in 1872, probably was as large and 
may have been larger than to-day's. Yet little was 
heard of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone in those 
days, although Moran's celebrated painting, now in 
the Capitol at Washington, helped influence Congress 
to make it a national park; and so little did the wild 
animals figure in the calculations of the period that 
they were not even protected in the national park 
until 1894, when hunting had reduced the buffalo to 
.twenty-five animals. 

Even in these days of enlightenment and apprecia- 
tion the great majority of people think of the Yellow- 
stone only as an area enclosing geysers. There are 
tourists so possessed with this idea that they barely 



204 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

glance at the canyon in passing. I have heard tourists 
refuse to walk to Inspiration Point because they had 
already looked over the rim at a convenient and un- 
impressive place. Imagine coming two thousand miles 
to balk at two miles and a half to the only spectacle 
of its kind in the world and one of the world's great 
spectacles at that ! As for the animals, few indeed 
see any but the occasional bears that feed at the hotel 
dumps in the evening. 

The Yellowstone National Park Hes in the recesses 
of the Rocky Mountains in northwestern Wyoming. 
It slightly overlaps Montana on the north and north- 
west, and Idaho on the southwest. It is rectangular, 
with an entrance about the middle of each side. It is 
the largest of the national parks, enclosing 3,348 square 
miles. It occupies a high plain girt with mountains. 
The Absarokas bound it on the east, their crest in- 
vading the park at Mount Chittenden. The Gallatin 
Range pushes into the northwestern comer from the 
north. The continental divide crosses the south- 
western comer over the lofty Madison Plateau and the 
ridge south of Yellowstone Lake. Altitudes are gen- 
erally high. The plains range from six to eight thou- 
sand feet; the mountains rise occasionally to ten 
thousand feet. South of the park the Pitchstone 
Plateau merges into the foot-hills of the Teton Moun- 
tains, which, thirty miles south of the southern bound- 
ary, rise precipitously seven thousand feet above the 
general level of the country. 

Though occupying the heart of the Rocky Moun- 



YELLOWSTONE 205 

tains, the region is not of them. In no sense is it 
typical. The Rockies are essentially granite which 
was forced molten from the depths when, at the crea- 
tion of this vast central mountain system, lateral 
pressures hfted the earth's skin high above sea-level, 
folded it, and finally eroded it along the crest of the 
folds. In this granite system the Yellowstone is a 
volcanic interlude, and of much later date. It belongs 
in a general way to the impulse of volcanic agitation 
which lighted vast beacons over three hundred thou- 
sand square miles of our northwest. The Cascade 
Mountains belong in this grouping. Four national 
parks of to-day were then in the making. Mount 
Rainier in Washington, Crater Lake in Oregon, Lassen 
Volcanic in California, and the Yellowstone in Wy- 
oming. Subterranean heat, remaining from those days 
of volcanic activity, to-day boils the water which the 
geysers hurl in air. 

In the northeastern part of the Yellowstone a large 
central crater was surrounded by smaller volcanoes. 
You can easily trace the conformation from Mount 
Washburn which stood upon its southeastern rim, 
heaped there, doubtless, by some explosion of more 
than common violence. This volcanic period was of 
long duration, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years. 
In the northeastern part of the park the erosion of a 
hill has exposed the petrified remains of thirteen large 
forests in layers one on top of the other, the deep in- 
tervening spaces filled wath thick deposits of ashes. 
Thirteen consecutive times were great forests here 



2o6 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

smothered in the products of eruption. Thirteen 
times did years enough elapse between eruptions for 
soil to make and forests to grow again, each perhaps 
of many generations of great trees. 

Yellowstone's mountains, then, are decayed vol- 
canoes, its rock is lava, its soil is ash and disintegrated 
lava. The resulting outline is soft and waving, with 
a tendency to levels. There are no pinnacled heights, 
no stratified, minareted walls, no precipiced cirques and 
glacier-shrouded peaks. Yet glaciers visited the region. 
The large granite boulder brought from afar and left 
near the west rim of the Grand Canyon with thousands 
of feet of rhyolite and other products of volcanism be- 
neath it is alone sufficient proof of that. 

Between the periods from volcano to glacier and 
from glacier to to-day, stream erosion has performed 
its miracles. The volcanoes have been rounded and 
flattened, the plateaus have been built up and levelled, 
and the canyons of the Yellowstone, Gibbon, and Mad- 
ison Rivers have been dug. Vigorous as its landscape 
still remains, it has thus become the natural playground 
for a multitude of people unaccustomed to the rigors 
of a powerfully accented mountain coimtry. 

The fact is that, in spite of its poverty of peaks 
and precipices, the Yellowstone country is one of the 
most varied and beautiful wildernesses in the world. 
Among national parks it gains rather than loses by 
its difference. While easily penetrated, it is wild in the 
extreme, hinting of the prairies in its broad opens, 
pasture for thousands of wild ruminants, and of the 



YELLOWSTONE 207 

loftier mountains in its distant ranges, its isolated 
peaks and its groups of rugged, rolling summits. In 
the number, magnitude, and variety of its waters it 
stands quite alone. It contains no less than three 
watersheds of importance, those of the Yellowstone, 
Madison, and Snake Rivers, flowing respectively north, 
west, and south. The waters of the Yellowstone and 
Madison make it an important source of the Missouri. 
There are minor rivers of importance in the park 
and innumerable lesser streams. It is a network of 
waterways. Its waterfalls are many, and two of 
them are large and important. Its lakes are many, 
and several are large. Yellowstone Lake is the largest 
of its altitude in the world. 

As a wilderness, therefore, the Yellowstone is un- 
equalled. Its innumerable waters insure the luxuri- 
ance of its growths. Its forested parts are densely 
forested; its flower-gardens are unexcelled in range, 
color, and variety, and its meadows grow deep in many 
kinds of rich grass. If it were only for the splendor 
of its wilderness, it still would be worth the while. 
Imagine this wilderness heavily populated with friendly 
wild animals, sprinkled with geysers, hot springs, mud 
volcanoes, painted terraces and petrified groves, sen- 
sational with breath-taking canyons and waterfalls, 
penetrable over hundreds of miles of well built road 
and several times the mileage of trails, and comforta- 
ble because of its large hotels and pubHc camps lo- 
cated conveniently for its enjoyment, and you have a 
pleasure-ground of extraordinary quahty. Remember 



2o8 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

that one may camp out almost anywhere, and that all 
waters are trout waters. Yellowstone offers the best 
fishing easily accessible in the continent. 

Another advantage possessed by the Yellowstone 
is a position near the centre of the country among 
great railroad systems. The Northern Pacific reaches 
it on the north, the Burlington on the east, and the 
Union Pacific on the west. One can take it coming 
or going between oceans; it is possible to buy tickets 
in by any one railroad and out by either of the others. 
An elaborate system of automobile-coaches swings the 
passenger where he pleases, meeting all incoming 
trains and delivering at all outgoing trains. It is 
much easier now to see the Yellowstone than in the 
much-vaunted stage-coach times previous to 191 5, 
times sorely lamented by the romantic because their 
passing meant the passing of the picturesque old horse- 
drawn stage-coach from its last stand in the United 
States; times when a tour of the Yellowstone meant 
six and a half days of slow, dusty travel, starting early 
and arriving late, with a few minutes or hours at each 
"sight" for the soiled and exhausted traveller to gape 
in ignorant wonder, watch in hand. 

To-day one travels swiftly and comfortably in 
entire leisure, stopping at hotels or camps as he pleases, 
and staying at each as long as he Ukes. The runs 
between the lingering places are now a pleasure. If 
hurried, one can now accomplish the stage-coach trip 
of the past in two days, while the old six and a half 
days now means a leisurely and delightful visit. 



YELLOWSTONE 209 

With the new order of travel began a new con- 
ception of the Yellowstone's public usefulness. It 
ceased to be a museum of wonders and began to be a 
summer pleasure-ground. Instead of the fast auto- 
mobile-stage decreasing the average length of visit, 
the new idea which it embodied has lengthened it. 
This new idea is a natural evolution which began with 
the automobile and spread rapidly. The railroads had 
been bringing tourists principally on transcontinental 
stop-overs. Automobiles brought people who came 
really to see the Yellowstone, who stayed weeks at 
pubHc camps to see it, or who brought outfits and 
camped out among its spectacles. The first Ford 
which entered the park on the morning of August i, 
1 91 5, the day when private cars were first admitted, 
so loaded with tenting and cooking utensils that the 
occupants scarcely could be seen, was the herald of the 
new and greater Yellowstone. Those who laughed 
and those who groaned at sight of it, and there were 
both, were no seers; for that minute Yellowstone en- 
tered upon her destiny. 

The road scheme is simple and effective. From 
each entrance a road leads into an oblong loop road 
enclosing the centre of the park and touching the prin- 
cipal points of scenic interest. This loop is connected 
across the middle for convenience. From it several 
short roads push out to special spectacles, and a long 
road follows Lamar Creek through a northeastern en- 
trance to a mining town which has no other means of 
communication with the world outside. This is the 



2IO THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

road to Specimen Ridge with its thirteen engulfed 
forests, to the buffalo range, and, outside the park 
boundaries, to the Grasshopper Glacier, in whose glassy 
embrace may be seen millions of grasshoppers which 
have lain in very cold storage indeed from an age be- 
fore man. All are automobile roads. 



II 

The hot-water phenomena are scattered over a 
large area of the park. The Mammoth Hot Springs 
at the northern entrance are the only active examples 
of high terrace-building. The geysers are concentrated 
in three adjoining groups upon the middle-west side. 
But hot springs occur everywhere at widely separated 
points; a ste^m jet is seen emerging even from the 
depths .of the Grand Canyon a thousand feet below 
the rim. 

The traveller is never long allowed to forget, in 
the silent beauty of the supreme wilderness, the park's 
imcanny nature. Suddenly encountered columns of 
steam rising from innocent meadows; occasional half- 
acres of dead and discolored brush emerging from hot 
and yellow mud-holes within the glowing forest heart; 
an unexpected roaring hillside running with smoking 
water; irregular agitated pools of gray, pink, or yellow 
mud, spitting, like a pot of porridge, explosive puffs of 
steam; the warm vaporing of a shallow in a cold forest- 
bound lake; a continuous violent bellowing from the 
depths of a ragged roadside hole which at intervals 



YELLOWSTONE 211 

vomits noisily quantities of thick brown and purple 
liquid; occasional groups of richly colored hot springs 
in an acre or more of dull yellows, the whole steaming 
vehemently and interchanging the pinks and blues of 
its hot waters as the passing traveller changes his angle 
of vision — these and other uncouth phenomena in 
wide variety and frequent repetition enliven the tour- 
ist's way. They are more numerous in geyser neigh- 
borhoods, but some of them are met singly, always with 
a Httle shock of surprise, in every part of the park. 

The terrace-building springs in the north of the 
park engulf trees. The bulky growing mounds of 
white and gray deposit are edged with minutely carven 
basins mounted upon elaborately fluted supports of 
ornate design, over whose many-colored edges flows a 
shimmer of hot water. Basin rises upon basin, tier 
upon tier, each in turn destined to clog and dry and 
merge into the mass while new basins and new tiers 
form and grow and glow awhile upon their outer flank. 
The material, of course, is precipitated by the water 
when it emerges from the earth's hot interior. The 
vivid yellows and pinks and blues in which these ter- 
races clothe themselves upon warm days result from 
minute vegetable algae which thrive in the hot satu- 
rated lime-water but quickly die and fade to gray and 
shining white on drying. The height of some of these 
shapeless masses of terrace-built structures is surpris- 
ing. But more surprising yet is the vividness of color 
assumed by the limpid springs in certain Ughts and at 
certain angles. 



212 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

Climbing the terraces at the expense of wet feet, 
one stands upon broad, white, and occasionally very 
damp plateaus which steam vigorously in spots. These 
spots are irregularly circular and very shallow pools of 
hot water, some of which bubble industriously with a 
low, pleasant hum. They are not boiling springs; the 
bubbling is caused by escaping gases; but their waters 
are extremely hot. The intense color of some of these 
pools varies or disappears with the changing angle of 
vision; the water itself is Hmpid. 

Elsewhere throughout the park the innumerable 
hot springs seem to be less charged with deposi table 
matter; elsewhere they build no terraces, but bubble 
joyously up through bowls often many feet in depth 
and diameter. Often they are inspiringly beautiful. 
The blue Morning Glory Spring is jewel-like rather than 
flower-like in its color quality, but its bowl remarkably 
resembles the flower which gives it name. Most springs 
are gloriously green. Some are the sources of consid- 
erable streams. Some stir shghtly with the feeling 
rather than the appearance of life; others are perpet- 
ually agitated, several small springs betraying their 
relationship to the geysers by a periodicity of activity. 

When the air is dry and the temperature low, the 
springs shoot thick volumes of steam high in air. To 
the incomer by the north or west entrance who has yet 
to see a geyser, the first view of the Lower Geyser Basin 
brings a shock of astonishment no matter what his 
expectation. Let us hope it is a cool, bracing, breezy 
morning when the broad yellow plain emits hundreds 



YELLOWSTONE 213 

of columns of heavy steam to unite in a wind-tossed 
cloud overlying and setting off the uncanny spectacle. 
Several geysers spout vehemently and one or more 
roaring vents bellow like angry bulls in a nightmare. 
This is appropriately the introduction to the greater 
geyser basins which lie near by upon the south. 

Who shall describe the geysers ? What pen, what 
brush, shall do justice to their ghostly glory, the eager 
vehemence of their assaults upon the sky, their joy- 
ful gush and roar, their insistence upon conscious per- 
sonality and power, the white majesty of thqir fluted 
columns at the instant of fullest expansion, the supreme 
loveliness of their feathery florescence at the level of 
poise between rise and fall, their graciousness of form, 
their speedy airiness of action, their giant convolutions 
of sun-flecked steam rolling aloft in ever-expanding 
volume to rejoin the parent cloud? 

Perhaps there have been greater geyser basins 
somewhere in the prehistoric past. There may be 
greater still to come; one or two promising possibilities 
are in Alaska. But for the lapse of geologic time in 
which man has so far lived, Yellowstone has cornered 
the world's geyser market. There are only two other 
places where one may enjoy the spectacle of large gey- 
sers. One of these is New Zealand and the other 
Iceland; but both displays combined cannot equal 
Yellowstone's either in the number or the size of the 
geysers. 

Yellowstone has dozens of geysers of many kinds. 
They range in size from the httle spring that spurts a 



214 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

few inches every minute to the monster that hurls 
hundreds of tons of water three hundred feet in air 
every six or eight weeks. Many spout at fairly regular 
intervals of minutes or hours or days. Others are 
notably irregular, and these include most of the largest. 
Old Faithful won its name and reputation by its regu- 
larity; it is the only one of the group of monsters which 
lives up to its time-table. Its period ranges from in- 
tervals of about fifty-five minutes in seasons following 
winters of heavy snow to eighty or eighty-five minutes 
in seasons following winters of light snow. Its erup- 
tions are announced in the Old Faithful Inn a few 
minutes in advance of action and the population of the 
hotel walks out to see the spouting. At night a search- 
light is thrown upon the gushing flood. 

After all, Old Faithful is the most satisfactory of 
geysers. Several are more imposing. Sometimes en- 
thusiasts remain in the neighborhood for weeks wait- 
ing for the Giant to play and dare not venture far 
away for fear of missing the spectacle; while Old 
Faithful, which is quite as beautiful and nearly as 
large, performs hourly for the pleasure of thousands. 
Even the most hurried visitor to the Upper Basin is 
sure, between stages, of seeing several geysers in addi- 
tion to one or more performances of Old Faithful. 

The greatest of known geysers ceased playing in 
1888. I have found no authentic measurements or 
other stated records concerning the famous Excelsior. 
It hurled aloft an enormous volume of water, with a 
fury of action described as appalling. Posterity is 



YELLOWSTONE 215 

fortunate in the existence of a striking photograph of 
this monster taken at the height of its play by F. Jay 
Haynes, then official photographer of the park. 

"The first photographs I made were in the fall 
of 1881," Mr. Haynes writes me. "The eruptions con- 
tinued during the winter at increasing intervals from 
two hours, when the series began, to four hours when 
it ceased operations before the tourist season of 1882. 
Not having the modem photographic plates for in- 
stantaneous work in 1881, it was impossible to secure 
instantaneous views then, but in the spring of 1888, 
I made the view which you write about. It was taken 
at the fulness of its eruption. 

"The explosion was preceded by a rapid fUHng 
of the crater and a great overflow of water. The 
column was about fifty feet wide and came from the 
centre of the crater. Pieces of formation were torn 
loose and were thrown out during each eruption; large 
quantities eventually were removed from the crater, 
thus enlarging it to its present size." 

Here we have a witness's description of the process 
which clouds the career of the Excelsior Geyser. The 
enlargement of the vent eventually gave unrestrained 
passage to the imprisoned steam. The geyser ceased 
to play. To-day the Excelsior Spring is one of the 
largest hot springs in the Yellowstone and the world; 
its output of steaming water is constant and volumi- 
nous. Thus again we find relationship between the hot 
spring and the geyser; it is apparent that the same 
vent, except perhaps for differences of internal shaping, 



2i6 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

might serve for both. It was the removal of restrain- 
ing walls which changed the Excelsior Geyser to the 
Excelsior Spring. 

For many years geyser action remained a mystery 
balanced among conflicting theories, of which at last 
Bmisen's won general acceptance. Spring waters, or 
surface waters seeping through porous lavas, gather 
thousands of feet below the surface in some pocket 
located in strata which internal pressures still keep 
hot. Boiling as they gather, the waters rise till they 
fill the long vent-hole to the surface. StiU the steam 
keeps making in the deep pocket, where it is held down 
by the weight of the water in the vent above. As it 
accumulates this steam compresses more and more. 
The result is inevitable. There comes a moment when 
the expansive power of the compressed steam over- 
comes the weight above. Explosion follows. The 
steam, expanding now with violence, drives the water 
up the vent and out; nor is it satisfied until the vent 
is emptied. 

Upon the surface, as the geyser lapses and dies, 
the people turn away to the Inn and luncheon. Un- 
der the surface, again the waters gather and boil in 
preparation for the next eruption. The interval till 
then will depend upon the amount of water which 
reaches the deep pocket, the size of the pocket, and the 
length and shape of the vent-hole. If conditions per- 
mit the upward escape of steam as fast as it makes in 
the pocket, we have a hot spring. If the steam makes 
faster than it can escape, we have a geyser. 




THE EXCELSIOR GEYSER WHICH BLEW OUT IN 1888; YELLOWSTONE 




bri>m ,1 f>/iiil,>grtipli by fliiynes 

ONE OF THE TERRACES AT MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS; YELLOWSTONE 



YELLOWSTONE 217 



III 



So interesting are the geysers and their kin that, 
with their splendid wilderness setting, other glories 
seem superfluous. I have had my moments of impa- 
tience with the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone for 
being in the Yellowstone. Together, the canyon and 
the geysers are almost too much for one place, even 
perhaps for one visit. One can only hold so much, 
even of beauty, at once. Spectacles of this quahty 
and quantity need assimilation, and assimilation re- 
quires time. Nevertheless, once enter into sympathet- 
ic relations with the canyon, once find its heart and 
penetrate its secret, and the tables are quickly turned. 
Strangely, it now becomes quite easy to view with 
comparative coolness the claims of mere hot-water 
wonders. 

The canyon cannot be considered apart from its 
river any more than a geyser apart from its environ- 
ment of hot spring and basin, and any consideration 
of the Yellowstone River begins with its lake. As 
compared with others of scenic celebrity, Yellowstone 
Lake is unremarkable. Its shores are so low and 
the mountains of its southern border so flat and un- 
suggestive that it curiously gives the impression of 
surface altitude — curiously because it actually has the 
altitude ; its surface is more than seven thousand seven 
hundred feet above tide. If I have the advertisement 
right, it is the highest water in the world that floats a 
line of steamboats. 



2i8 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

The lake is large, twenty miles north and south 
by fifteen miles east and west; it is irregular with deep 
indentations. It is heavily wooded to the water's 
edge. All its entering streams are small except the 
Yellowstone River, which, from its source in the 
Absarokas just south of the park boundary, enters 
the Southeast Arm through the lowland wilderness 
home of the moose and the wild buffalo. The lake 
is the popular resort of thousands of large white peli- 
cans, its most picturesque feature. 

That part of the Yellowstone River which inter- 
ests us emerges from the lake at its most northerly 
point. It is here a broad swift stream of some depth 
and great clarity, so swarming with trout that a half- 
dozen or more usually may be seen upon its bottom 
at any glance from boat or bridge. A number of boats 
usually are anchored above the bridge from which 
anglers are successfully trailing artificial flies and spin- 
ners in the fast current; and the bridge is usually lined 
with anglers who, in spite of crude outfits, frequently 
hook good trout which they pull up by main strength 
much [as the phlegmatic patrons of excursion-steamers 
to the Banks yank flopping cod from brine to basket 
on the top deck. 

The last time I crossed the Fishing Bridge and 
paused to see the fun, a woman whose face beamed 
with happiness held up a twenty-inch trout and 
said: 

"Just look ! My husband caught this and he is 
seventy-six years old — last month. It's the first fish 



YELLOWSTONE 219 

he ever caught, for he was brought up in Kansas, you 
know, where there isn't any fishing. My ! but he's a 
proud man ! We're going to get the camp to cook it 
for us. He's gone now to look for a board to draw 
its measurements to show the folks at home." 

From here to the river's emergence from the park 
the fishing is not crude. In fact, it taxes the most 
skilful angler's art to steer his fighting trout through 
boiling rapids to the net. For very soon the Yellow- 
stone narrows and pitches down sharper slants to the 
climax of the falls and the mighty canyon. 

This intermediate stretch of river is beautiful in 
its quietude. The forests often touch the water's 
edge. And ever it narrows and deepens and splashes 
higher against the rocks which stem its current; for- 
ever it is steepening to the plunge. Above the Upper 
Fall it pinches almost to a mill-race, roars over low 
sills, swings eastward at right angles, and plunges a 
hundred and nine feet. I know of no cataract which 
expresses might in action so eloquently as the Upper 
Fall of the Yellowstone. Pressed as it is within nar- 
row bounds, it seems to gush with other motive power 
than merely gravity. Seen from above looking down, 
seen sideways from below, or looked at straight on 
from the camp site on the opposite rim, the water ap- 
pears hurled from the brink. 

Less than a mile south of the Upper Fall, the river 
again falls, this time into the Grand Canyon. 

Imposing as the Great Fall is, it must chiefly be 
considered as a part of the Grand Canyon picture. 



220 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

The only separate view of it looks up from the river's 
edge in front, a view which few get because of the diffi- 
cult climb; every other view poses it merely as an ele- 
ment in the canyon composition. Compared with the 
Upper Fall, its more than double height gives it the 
great superiority of majesty without detracting from 
the Upper Fall's gushing personality. In fact, it is the 
King of Falls. Comparison with Yosemite's falls is 
impossible, so different are the elements and conditions. 
The Great Fall of the Yellowstone carries in one body, 
perhaps, a greater bulk of water than all the Yosemite 
Valley's falls combined. 

And so we come to the canyon. In figures it is 
roughly a thousand feet deep and twice as wide, more 
or less, at the rim. The supremely scenic part reaches 
perhaps three miles below the Great Fall. Several 
rock points extend far into the canyon, from which 
the gorgeous spectacle may be viewed as from an aero- 
plane. Artists' Point, which is reached from the east 
side, displays the Great FaU as the centre of a noble 
composition. It was Moran's choice. Inspiration 
Point, which juts far in from the west side, shows a 
deeper and more comprehensive view of the canyon 
and only a gUmpse of the Great Fall. Both views are 
essential to any adequate conception. From Artists' 
Point the eye loses detail in the overmastering glory of 
the whole. From Inspiration Point the canyon re- 
veals itself in all the intimacy of its subHme form and 
color. Both views dazzle and astonish. Neither can 
be looked at very long at one time. 




From a photograph copyright by Giford 

YELLOWSTONE \- ALLEY FROM THE UPPER FALL TO THE LOWER FALL 




From a photograph copyright by Gijford 

THE LOWER FALL AND THE CRAXn CAXYOX OF THE YELLOWSTONE 



YELLOWSTONE 221 

It will help comprehension of the picture quality 
of this remarkable canyon to recall that it is carved 
out of the products of volcanism; its promontories and 
pinnacles are the knobbed and gnarled decomposition 
products of lava rocks left following erosion; its sides 
are gashed and fluted lava cliffs flanked by long straight 
slopes of coarse volcanic sand-like grains ; its colors have 
the distinctness and occasional luridness which seem 
natural to fused and oxidized disintegrations. Geo- 
logically speaking, it is a young canyon. It is dig- 
ging deeper all the time. 

Yellow, of course, is the prevailing color. Moran 
was right. His was the general point of view, his mes- 
sage the dramatic ensemble. But, even from Artists' 
Point, closer looking reveals great masses of reds and 
grays, while Inspiration Point discloses a gorgeous 
palette daubed with most of the colors and interme- 
diate tints that imagination can suggest. I doubt 
whether there is another such kaleidoscope in nature. 
There is apparently every gray from purest white to 
dull black, every yellow from lemon to deep orange, 
every red, pink, and bro^vn. These tints dye the rocks 
and sands in splashes and long transverse streaks 
which merge into a single joyous exclamation in vivid 
color whose red and yellow accents have something of 
the Oriental. Greens and blues are missing from the 
dyes, but are otherwise supphed. The canyon is edged 
with lodge-pole forests, and growths of lighter greens 
invade the sandy slants, at times nearly to the froth- 
ing river; and the river is a chain of emeralds and 



222 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

pearls. Blue completes the color gamut from the in- 
verted bowl of sky. 

No sketch of the canyon is complete without the 
story of the great robbery. I am not referring to the 
several hold-ups of the old stage-coach days, but to a 
robbery which occurred long before the coming of man 
— the theft of the waters of Yellowstone Lake; for 
this splendid river, these noble falls, this incomparable 
canyon, are the ill-gotten products of the first of Yellow- 
stone's hold-ups. 

Originally Yellowstone Lake was a hundred and 
sixty feet higher and very much larger than it is to-day. 
It extended from the headwaters of the present Yel- 
lowstone River, far in the south, northward past the 
present Great Fall and Inspiration Point. It included 
a large part of what is now known as the Hayden 
Valley. At that time the Continental Divide, which 
now cuts the southwest corner of the park, encircled 
the lake on its north, and just across the low divide 
was a small flat-lying stream which drained and still 
drains the volcanic slopes leading down from Dun- 
raven Peak and Mount Washburn. 

This small stream, known as Sulphur Creek, has 
the honor, or the dishonor if you choose, of being the 
first desperado of the Yellowstone, but one so much 
greater than its two petty imitators of human times 
that there is no comparison of misdeeds. Sulphur 
Creek stole the lake from the Snake River and used 
it to create the Yellowstone River, which in turn 
created the wonderful canyon. Here at last is a 



YELLOWSTONE 223 

crime in which all will agree that the end justified the 
means. 

How this piracy was accomplished is written on 
the rocks; even the former lake outlet into the Snake 
River is plainly discernible to-day. At the lake's north 
end, where the seeping waters of Sulphur Creek and 
the edge of the lake nearly met on opposite sides of 
what was then the low flat divide, it only required 
some shght disturbance indirectly volcanic, some un- 
accustomed rising of lake levels, perhaps merely some 
special stress of flood or storm to make the connection. 
Perhaps the creek itself, sapping back in the soft lava 
soils, unaided found the lake. Connection once made, 
the mighty body of lake water speedily deepened a 
channel northward and Sulphur Creek became sure 
of its posterity. 

At that time, hidden under the lake's surface, two 
rhyolite dikes, or upright walls of harder rock, extended 
crosswise through the lake more than half a mile apart. 
As the lake-level fell, the nearer of these dikes emerged 
and divided the waters into two lakes, the upper of 
which emptied over the dike into the lower. This was 
the beginning of the Great Fall. And presently, as 
the Great Fall cut its breach deeper and deeper into 
the restraining dike, it lowered the upper-lake level 
until presently the other rhyolite dike emerged from 
the surface carrying another cataract. And thus be- 
gan the Upper Fall. 

Meantime the stream below kept digging deeper 
the canyon of Sulphur Creek, and there came a time 



224 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

when the lower lake drained wholly away. In its place 
was left a bottom-land which is now a part of the Hay- 
den Valley, and, running through it, a river. Forth- 
with this river began scooping, from the Great Fall to 
Inspiration Point, the scenic ditch which is world-cele- 
brated to-day as the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. 



IV 

Now imagine this whole superlative wilderness 
heavily populated with wild animals in a state of 
normal Uving. Imagine thirty thousand elk, for in- 
stance, roaming about in bands of half a dozen to half 
a thousand. Imagine them not friendly, perhaps, but 
fearless, with that entire indifference which most 
animals show to creatures which neither help nor harm 
them — as indifferent, say, as the rabbits in your pas- 
ture or the squirrels in your oak woods. Imagine all 
the wild animals, except the sneaking, predatory kind, 
proportionally plentiful and similarly fearless — ^bear, 
antelope, mountain-sheep, deer, bison, even moose in 
the fastnesses, to say nothing of the innumerable 
smaller beasts. There has been no hunting of harm- 
less animals in the Yellowstone since 1894, and this is 
one result. 

It is true that comparatively few visitors see many 
animals, but that is the fault of their haste or their 
temperament or their inexperience of nature. One 
must seek in sympathy to find. Tearing over the 
wilderness roads in noisy motors smelling of gasolene 



YELLOWSTONE 225 

is not the best way to find them, although the elk and 
deer became indifferent to automobiles as soon as 
they discovered them harmless. One may see them 
not infrequently from automobiles and often from 
horse-drawn wagons; and one may see them often 
and intimately who walks or rides horseback on the 
trails. 

The admission of the automobile to Yellowstone 
roads changed seeing conditions materially. Li five 
days of quiet driving in 191 4 with Colonel L. M. Brett, 
then superintendent of the park, in a direction op- 
posite to the stages, I saw more animals from my 
wagon-seat than I had expected to see wild in all my 
life. We saw bear half a dozen times, elk in numbers, 
black-tailed and white-tailed deer so frequently that 
count was lost the second morning, four bands of an- 
telope, buffalo, foxes, coyotes, and even a bull moose. 
Once we stopped so as not to hurry a large bear and 
two cubs which were leisurely crossing the road. 
Deer watched us pass within a hundred yards. Elk 
grazed at close quarters, and our one bull moose 
obHgingly ambled ahead of us along the road. There 
was never fear, never excitement (except my own), 
not even haste. Even the accustomed horses no more 
than cocked an ear or two while waiting for three wild 
bears to get out of the middle of the road. 

Of course scenic completeness is enough in itself 
to justify the existence of these animals in the marvel- 
lous wilderness of the Yellowstone. Their presence 
in normal abundance and their calm at-homeness per- 



226 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

fects nature's spectacle. In this respect, also, Yellow- 
stone's unique place among the national parks is secure. 

The lessons of the Yellowstone are plain. It 
is now too late to restore elsewhere the great nat- 
ural possession which the thoughtless savagery of a 
former generation destroyed in careless ruth, but, 
thanks to this early impulse of conservation, a fine 
example still remains in the Yellowstone. But it is 
not too late to obHterate wholly certain misconcep- 
tions by which that savagery was then justified. It 
is not too late to look upon wild animals as fellow heri- 
tors of the earth, possessing certain natural rights which 
men are glad rather than bound to respect. It is not 
too late to consider them, with birds and forests, lakes, 
rivers, seas, and skies, a part of nature's glorious gift 
for man's manifold satisfaction, a gift to carefully con- 
serve for the study and enjoyment of to-day, and to 
develop for the uses of larger and more appreciative 
generations to come. 

Of course if this be brought to universal accom- 
pHshment (and the impulse has been advancing fast 
of late), it must be Yellowstone's part to furnish the 
exhibit, for we have no other. 

To many the most surprising part of Yellowstone's 
wild-animal message is man's immunity from hatred 
and harm by predatory beasts. To know that wild 
bears if kindly treated are not only harmless but 
friendly, that grizzHes will not attack except in self- 
defense, and that wolves, wild cats, and mountain- 
lions fly with that instinctive dread which is man's 



YELLOWSTONE 227 

dependable protection, may destroy certain romantic 
illusions of youth and discredit the observation if 
not the conscious verity of many an honest hunter; 
but it imparts a modern scientific fact which sets 
the whole wild-animal question in a new light. In 
every case of assault by bears where complete evi- 
dence has been obtainable, the United States Biological 
Survey, after fullest investigation, has exonerated 
the bear; he has always been attacked or has had 
reason to believe himself attacked. In more than 
thirty summers of field-work Vernon Bailey, Chief 
Field-Naturalist of the Biological Survey, has slept 
on the ground without fires or other protection, 
and frequently in the morning found tracks of in- 
vestigating predatory beasts. There are reports but 
no records of human beings killed by wolves or moun- 
tain-Hons in America. Yet, for years, all reports sus- 
ceptible of proof have been officially investigated. 

One of Yellowstone's several manifest destinies 
is to become the well-patronized American school of 
wild-life study. Already, from its abundance, it is 
supplying wild animals to help in the long and difficult 
task of restoring here and there, to national parks and 
other favorable locaHties, stocks which existed before 
the great slaughter. 

V 

Thirty miles south of this rolling volcanic inter- 
lude the pristine Rockies, as if in shame of their mo- 
ment of gorgeous softness, rear in contrast their sharp- 
est and most heroic monument of bristling granite. 



228 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

Scarcely over the park's southern boundary, the foot- 
hills of the Teton Mountains swell gently toward their 
Gothic climax. The country opens and roughens. 
The excellent road, which makes Jackson's Hole a prac- 
tical part of the Yellowstone pleasure-ground, winds 
through a rolling, partly wooded grazing-ground of 
elk and deer. The time was when these wild herds 
made living possible for the nation's hunted despera- 
does, for Jackson's Hole was the last refuge to yield 
to law and order. 

At the climax of this sudden granite protest, the 
Grand Teton rises 7,014 feet in seeming sheemess 
from Jackson Lake to its total altitude of 13,747 feet. 
To its right is Mount Moran, a monster only less. 
The others, clustering around them, have no names. 

All together, they are few and grouped like the 
imits of some fabulous barbaric stronghold. Fitted 
by size and majesty to be the climax of a mighty range, 
the Tetons concentrate their all in this one giant 
group. Quickly, north and south, they subside and 
pass. They are a granite island in a sea of plain. 

Seen across the lake a dozen miles which seem but 
three, these clustered steepled temples rise sheer from 
the water. Their flanks are snow-streaked still in 
August, their shoulders hung with glaciers, their spires 
bare and shining. A greater contrast to the land from 
which we came and to which we presently return 
cannot be imagined. Geologically, the two have 
nothing in common. Scenically, the Tetons set off 
and complete the spectacle of the Yellowstone. 




From a pliolograph by Charles D. WaUoll 

THE TETON MOUNTAIN FROM JACKSON HOLE, SOUTH OF YELLOWSTONE 




From a photograph by Ilaym-^ 

THE LA\A LANDSCAPE OF THE YELLOWSTONE AND GIBBON FALLS 



XI 

THREE MONSTERS OF HAWAII 

Hawah National Park, Hawaiian Islaitos. 
Area, ii8 Square Miles 

IF this chapter is confined to the three volcano tops 
which Congress reserved on the islands of Hawaii 
and Maui in 191 7, wonderful though these are, it will 
describe a small part indeed of the wide range of 
novelty, charm, and beauty which will fall to the lot 
of those who visit the Hawaii National Park. One of 
the great advantages enjoyed by this national park, 
as indeed by Mount McKinley's, is its location in a 
surrounding of entire novelty, so that in addition to 
the object of his visit, itself so supremely worth while, 
the traveller has also the pleasure of a trip abroad. 

In novelty at least the Hawaii National Park has 
the advantage over the Alaskan park because it in- 
volves the life and scenery of the tropics. We can 
find snow-crowned mountains and winding glaciers at 
home, but not equatorial jungles, sandalwood groves, 
and surf-riding. 

Enormous as this element of charm unquestion- 
ably is, this is not the place to sing the pleasures of 
the Hawaiian Islands. Their palm-fringed horizons, 

surf-edged coral reefs, tropical forests and gardens, 

229 



230 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

plantations of pineapple and sugar-cane are as cele- 
brated as their rainbows, earthquakes, and graceful 
girls dancing under tropical stars to the languorous 
ukelele. 

Leaving these and kindred spectacles to the steam- 
ship circulars and the library shelf, it is our part to 




MAP OF HAWAII NATIONAL PARK 



note that the Hawaii National Park possesses the fourth 
largest volcanic crater in the world, whose aspect at 
sunrise is one of the world's famous spectacles, the 
largest active volcano in the world, and a lake of tur- 
bulent, glowing, molten lava, ^'the House of Ever- 
lasting Fire," which fills the beholder with awe. 



THREE MONSTERS OF HAWAII 231 

It was not at all, then, the gentle poetic aspects 
of the Hawaiian Islands which led Congress to create 
a national park there, though these form its romantic, 
contrasted setting. It was the extraordinary volcanic 
exhibit, that combination of thrilling spectacles of 
Nature's colossal power which for years have drawn 
travellers from the four quarters of the earth. The 
Hawaii National Park includes the summits of Hale- 
akala, on the island of Maui, and Mauna Loa and 
Kilauea, on the island of Hawaii. 

Spain claims the discovery of these delectable 
isles by Juan Gaetano, in 1555, but their formal dis- 
covery and exploration fell to the lot of Captain James 
Cook, in 1778. The Hawaiians thought him a god 
and loaded him with the treasures of the islands, but 
on his return the following year his illness and the con- 
duct of his crew ashore disillusioned them; they killed 
him and burned his flesh, but their priests deified his 
bones, nevertheless. Parts of these were recovered 
later and a monument was erected over them. Then 
civil wars raged until all the tribes were conquered, 
at the end of the eighteenth century, by one chieftain, 
Kamehameha, who became king. His descendants 
reigned until 1874 when, the old royal line dying out, 
Kalakaua was elected his successor. 

From this time the end hastened. A treaty with 
the United States ceded Pearl Harbor as a coaling-sta- 
tion and entered American goods free of duty, in return 
for which Hawaiian sugar and a few other products en- 
tered the United States free. This established the 



232 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

sugar industry on a large and permanent scale and 
brought laborers from China, Japan, the Azores, and 
Madeira. More than ten thousand Portuguese mi- 
grated to the islands, and the native population began 
a comparative decrease which still continues. 

After Kalakaua's death, his sister Liliuokalani 
succeeding him in 1891, the drift to the United States 
became rapid. When President Cleveland refused 
to annex the islands, a republic was formed in 1894, 
but the danger from Japanese immigration became 
so imminent that in 1898, during the Spanish- American 
War, President McKinley yielded to the Hawaiian 
request and the islands were annexed to the United 
States by resolution of Congress. 

The setting for the picture of our island-park will 
be complete with several facts about its physical origin. 
The Hawaiian Islands rose from the sea in a series of 
volcanic eruptions. Originally, doubtless, the greater 
islands were simple cones emitting lava, ash, and 
smoke, which coral growths afterward enlarged and 
enriched. Kauai was the first to develop habitable 
conditions, and the island southeast of it followed in 
order. Eight of the twelve are now habitable. 

The most eastern island of the group is Hawaii. 
It is also much the largest. This has three volcanoes. 
Mauna Loa, greatest of the three, and also the greatest 
volcanic mass in the world, is nearly the centre of the 
island; Kilauea lies a few miles east of it; the summits 
of both are included in the national park. Mauna 
Kea, a volcanic cone of great beauty in the north cen- 



THREE MONSTERS OF HAWAII 233 

tre of the island, forming a triangle with the other 
two, is not a part of the national park. 

Northwest of Hawaii across sixty miles or more of 
salt water is the island of Maui, second largest of the 
group. In its southern part rises the distinguished 
volcano of Haleakala, whose summit and world-famous 
crater is the third member of the national park. The 
other habited islands, in order westward, are Kahoo- 
lawe, Lanai, Molokai, Oahu, Kauai, and Niihau; no 
portions of these are included in the park. Kahoo- 
lawe, Lanai, and Niihau are much the smallest of the 
group. 

Haleakala 

Of the three volcanic summits which concern us, 
Haleakala is nearest the principal port of Honolulu, 
though not always the first visited. Its slopes nearly 
fill the southern half of the island of Maui. 

The popular translation of the name Haleakala is 
"The House of the Sun"; literally the word mea.ns 
"The House Built by the Sun." The volcano is a 
monster of more than ten thousand feet, which bears 
upon its summit a crater of a size and beauty that 
make it one of the world's show-places. This crater 
is seven and a half miles long by two and a third 
miles wide. Only three known craters exceed Halea- 
kala's in size. Aso san, the monster crater of Japan, 
largest by far in the world, is fourteen miles long by 
ten wide and contains many farms. Lago di Bolseno, 
in Italy, next in size, measures eight and a half by seven 



234 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

and a half miles; and Monte Albano, also in Italy, 
eight by seven miles. 

Exchanging your automobile for a saddle-horse at 
the volcano's foot, you spend the afternoon in the 
ascent. Wonderful indeed, looking back, is the grow- 
ing arc of plantation and sea, islands growing upon the 
horizon, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa hfting distant 
snow-tipped peaks. You spend the night in a rest- 
house on the rim of the crater, but not until you have 
seen the spectacle of sunset; and in the gray of the 
morning you are summoned to the supreme spectacle 
of sunrise. Thousands have crossed seas for Halea- 
kala^s sunrise. 

That first view of the crater from the rim is one 
never to be forgotten. Its floor lies two thousand 
feet below, an enormous rainless, rolHng plain from 
which rise thirteen volcanic cones, clean-cut, as regular 
in form as carven things. Several of these are seven 
hundred feet in height. "It must have been awe- 
inspiring," writes Castle, "when its cones were spouting 
fire, and rivers of scarlet molten lava crawled along the 
floor." 

The stillness of this spot emphasizes its emo- 
tional effect. A word spoken ordinarily loud is Hke 
a shout. You can hear the footsteps of the goats far 
down upon the crater floor. Upon this floor grow 
plants known nowhere else; they are famous under 
the name of Silver Swords — yucca-like growths three 
or four feet high whose drooping filaments of bloom 
gleam like pohshed silver stilettos. 



THREE MONSTERS OF HAWAII 235 

When Mark Twain saw the crater, "vagrant 
white clouds came drifting along, high over the sea 
and valley; then they came in couples and groups; 
then in imposing squadrons; gradually joining their 
forces, they banked themselves solidly together a 
thousand feet under us and totally shut out land and 
ocean; not a vestige of anything was left in view, but 
just a little of the rim of the crater circling away from 
the pinnacle whereon we sat, for a ghostly procession 
of wanderers from the filmy hosts without had drifted 
through a chasm in the crater wall and filed round 
and round, and gathered and sunk and blended together 
till the abyss was stored to the brim with a fleecy fog. 
Thus banked, motion ceased, and silence reigned. 
Clear to the horizon, league on league, the snowy folds, 
with shallow creases between, and with here and there 
stately piles of vapory architecture Ufting themselves 
aloft out of the common plain — some near at hand, 
some in the middle distances, and others relieving the 
monotony of the remote soUtudes. There was little 
conversation, for the impressive scene overawed speech. 
I felt like the Last Man, neglected of the judgment, 
and left pinnacled in mid-heaven, a forgotten relic of 
a vanished world." 

The extraordinary perfection of this desert crater 
is probably due to two causes. Vents which tapped it 
far down the volcano's flanks prevented its filling with 
molten lava; absence of rain has preserved its walls 
intact and saved its pristine beauty from the deface- 
ment of erosion. 



236 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

Haleakala has its legend, and this Jack London 
has sifted to its elements and given us in "The Cruise 
of the Snark.'' I quote: 

"It is told that long ago, one Maui, the son of 
Hina, lived on what is now known as West Maui. 
His mother, Hina, employed her time in the making 
of kapas. She must have made them at night, for 
her days were occtipied in trying to dry the kapas. 
Each morning, and all morning, she toiled at spreading 
them out in the sun. But no sooner were they out 
than she began taking them in in order to have them 
all under shelter for the night. For know that the 
days were shorter then than now. Maui watched his 
mother's futile toil and felt sorry for her. He decided 
to do something — oh, no, not to help her hang out and 
take in the kapas. He was too clever for that. His 
idea was to make the sun go slower. Perhaps he was 
the first Hawaiian astronomer. At any rate, he took 
a series of observations of the sun from various parts 
of the island. His conclusion was that the sun's path 
was directly across Haleakala. Unlike Joshua, he 
stood in no need of divine assistance. He gathered a 
huge quantity of cocoanuts, from the fibre of which he 
braided a stout cord, and in one end of which he made 
a noose, even as the cowboys of Haleakala do to this 
day. 

"Next he climbed into the House of the Sun. 
When the sun came tearing along the path, bent on 
completing its journey in the shortest time possible, 
the vaHant youth threw his lariat around one of the 



THREE MONSTERS OF HAWAII 237 

sun's largest and strongest beams. He made the sun 
slow down some; also, he broke the beam short oflf. 
And he kept on roping and breaking off beams till the 
sun said it was willing to listen to reason. Maui set 
forth his terms of peace, which the sun accepted, 
agreeing to go more slowly thereafter. Wherefore 
Hina had ample time in which to dry her kapas, and 
the days are longer than they used to be, which last 
is quite in accord with the teachings of modern as- 
tronomy." 

Mauna Loa 

Sixty miles south of Maui, Hawaii, largest of the 
island group, contains the two remaining parts of our 
national park. From every point of view Mauna 
Loa and Mauna Kea, both snow-crowned monsters 
approaching fourteen thousand feet of altitude, dom- 
inate the island. But Mauna Kea is not a part of the 
national park; Kilauea, of less than a third its height, 
shares that honor with Mauna Loa. Of the two, 
Kilauea is much the older, and doubtless was a con- 
spicuous figure in the old landscape. It has been 
largely absorbed in the immense swelling bulk of 
Mauna Loa, which, springing later from the island 
soil near by, no doubt diverting Kilauea's vents far 
below sea-level, has sprawled over many miles. So 
nearly has the younger absorbed the older, that 
Kilauea's famous pit of molten lava seems almost to 
he upon Mauna Loa's slope. 

Mauna Loa soars 13,675 feet. Its snowy dome 



238 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

shares with Mauna Kea, which rises even higher, the 
summit honors of the islands. From Hilo, the principal 
port of the island of Hawaii, Mauna Loa suggests the 
back of a leviathan, its body hidden in the mists. 
The way up, through forests of ancient mahogany 
and tangles of giant tree-fern, then up many miles of 
lava slopes, is one of the inspiring tours in the moun- 
tain world. The summit crater, Mokuaweoweo, three- 
quarters of a mile long by a quarter mile wide, is as 
spectacular in action as that of Kilauea. 

This enormous volcanic mass has grown of its own 
output in comparatively a short time. For many 
decades it has been extraordinarily frequent in erup- 
tion. Every five or ten years it gets into action with 
violence, sometimes at the summit, oftener of recent 
years since the central vent has lengthened, at weak- 
ened places on its sides. Few volcanoes have been so 
regularly and systematically studied. 

Kilauea 

The most spectacular exhibit of the Hawaii 
National Park is the lake of fire in the crater of Kilauea. 

Kilauea is unusual among volcanoes. It follows 
few of the popular conceptions. Older than the tower- 
ing Mauna Loa, its height is only four thousand feet. 
Its lavas have found vents through its flanks, which 
they have broadened and flattened. Doubtless its 
own lavas have helped Mauna Loa's to merge the two 
mountains into one. It is no longer explosive like the 
usual volcano; since 1790, when it destroyed a native 



I 




From a photograph copyrighl by E. M. Xcn'man 

THE KILAUEA PIT OF FIRE, HAWAII NATIONAL PARK 
Photographed at night by the light of its flaming lavas 




From a photograph copyright by Sewman Travel Talks and Brown and Dawson 
WITHIN THE CRATER OF KILAUEA 



THREE MONSTERS OF HAWAII 239 

army, it has ejected neither rocks nor ashes. Its 
crater is no longer definitely bowl-shaped. From the 
middle of a broad flat plain, which really is what is 
left of the ancient great crater, drops a pit with ver- 
tical sides within which boil its lavas. 

The pit, the lake of fire, is Halemaumau, com- 
monly translated ''The House of Everlasting Fire"; 
the correct translation is "The House of the Maumau 
Fern," whose leaf is twisted and contorted like some 
forms of lava. Two miles and a little more from 
Halemaumau, on a part of the ancient crater wall, 
stands the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, which is 
under the control of the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology. The observatory was built for the 
special purpose of studying the pit of fire, the risings 
and falUngs of whose lavas bear a relationship toward 
the volcanism of Mauna Loa which is scientifically 
important, but which we need not discuss here. 

The traveller enters Hawaii by steamer through 
Hilo. He reaches the rim of Kilauea by automobile, 
an inspiring run of thirty-one miles over a road of vol- 
canic glass, bordered with vegetation strange to eyes 
accustomed only to that of the temperate zone — bril- 
liant hibiscus, native hardwood trees with feathery 
pompons for blossoms, and the giant ferns which tower 
overhead. On the rim are the hotels and the observa- 
tory. Steam- jets emerge at intervals, and hot sulphur 
banks exhibit rich yellows. From there the way de- 
scends to the floor of the crater and unrolls a ribbon 
of flower-bordered road seven miles long to the pit of 



240 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

fire. By trail, the distance is only two miles and a 
half across long stretches of hard lava congealed in 
ropes and ripples and strange contortions. Where else 
is a spectacle one-tenth as appalling so comfortably 
and quickly reached ? 

Halemaumau is an irregular pit a thousand feet 
long with perpendicular sides. Its depth varies. 
Sometimes one looks hundreds of feet down to the 
boihng surface; sometimes its lavas overrun the top. 
The fumes of sulphur are very strong, with the wind in 
your face. At these times, too, the air is extremely 
hot. There are cracks in the surrounding lava where 
you can scorch paper or cook a beefsteak. 

Many have been the attempts to describe it. Not 
having seen it myself, I quote two here; one a careful 
picture by a close student of the spectacle, Mr. William 
R. Castle, Jr., of Honolulu; the other a rapid sketch 
by Mark Twain. 

"By daylight," writes Castle, "the lake of fire is 
a greenish-yellow, cut with ragged cracks of red that 
look like pale streaks of stationary lightning across its 
surface. It is restless, breathing rapidly, bubbling up 
at one point and sinking down in another; throwing 
up sudden fountains of scarlet molten lava that play 
a few minutes and subside, leaving shimmering mounds 
which gradually settle to the level surface of the lake, 
turning brown and yellow as they sink. 

"But as the daylight fades the fires of the pit 
shine more brightly. Mauna Loa, behind, becomes a 
pale, gray-blue, insubstantial dome, and overhead stars 



THREE MONSTERS OF HAWAII 241 

begin to appear. As darkness comes the colors on 
the lake grow so intense that they almost hurt. The 
fire is not only red; it is blue and purple and orange 
and green. Blue flames shimmer and dart about the 
edges of the pit, back and forth across the surface of 
the restless mass. Sudden fountains paint blood-red 
the great plume of sulphur smoke that rises con- 
stantly, to drift away across the poisoned desert of 
Kau. Sometimes the spurts of lava are so violent, so 
exaggerated by the night, that one draws back terri- 
fied lest some atom of their molten substance should 
spatter over the edge of the precipice. Sometimes the 
whole lake is in motion. Waves of fire toss and bat- 
tle with each other and dash in clouds of bright ver- 
milion spray against the black sides of the pit. Some- 
times one of these sides falls in with a roar that echoes 
back and forth, and mighty rocks are swallowed in 
the liquid mass of fire that closes over them in a whirl- 
pool, like water over a sinking ship. 

"Again everything is quiet, a thick scum forms 
over the surface of the lake, dead, like the scum on 
the surface of a lonely forest pool. Then it shivers. 
Flashes of fire dart from side to side. The centre 
bursts open and a huge fountain of lava twenty feet 
thick and fifty high, streams into the air and plays for 
several minutes, waves of blinding fire flowing out 
from it, dashing against the sides until the black rocks 
are starred all over with bits of scarlet. To the spec- 
tator there is, through it all, no sense of fear. So in- 
tense, so tremendous is the spectacle that silly little 



242 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

human feelings find no place. All sensations are sub- 
merged in a sense of awe." 

Mark Twain gazed into Halemaumau's terrifying 
depths. "It looked," he writes, "like a colossal rail- 
road-map of the State of Massachusetts done in chain 
lightning on a midnight sky. Imagine it — imagine a 
coal-black sky shivered into a tangled network of 
angry fire ! 

"Here and there were gleaming holes a hundred 
feet in diameter, broken in the dark crust, and in them 
the melted lava — the color a dazzling white just tinged 
with yellow — was boiling and surging furiously; and 
from these holes branched numberless bright torrents 
in many directions, like the spokes of a wheel, and kept 
a tolerably straight course for a while and then swept 
round in huge rainbow curves, or made a long succes- 
sion of sharp worm-fence angles, which looked pre- 
cisely like the fiercest jagged lightning. Those streams 
met other streams, and they mingled with and crossed 
and recrossed each other in every conceivable direction, 
like skate-tracks on a popular skating-ground. Some- 
times streams twenty or thirty feet wide flowed from 
the holes to some distance without dividing — and 
through the opera-glasses we could see that they ran 
down small, steep hills and were genuine cataracts of 
fire, white at their source, but soon cooling and turning 
to the richest red, grained with alternate lines of black 
and gold. Every now and then masses of the dark 
crust broke away and floated slowly down these 
streams like rafts down a river. 



THREE MONSTERS OF HAWAII 243 

"Occasionally, the molten lava flowing under the 
superincumbent crust broke through — split a dazzling 
streak, from five hundred to a thousand feet long, like 
a sudden flash of lightning, and then acre after acre of 
the cold lava parted into fragments, turned up edge- 
wise like cakes of ice when a great river breaks up, 
plunged downward, and were swallowed in the crim- 
son caldron. Then the wide expanse of the 'thaw' 
maintained a ruddy glow for a while, but shortly 
cooled and became black and level again. During a 
'thaw' every dismembered cake was marked by a 
glittering white border which was superbly shaded 
inward by aurora borealis rays, which were a flaming 
yellow where they joined the white border, and from 
thence toward their points tapered into glowing crim- 
son, then into a rich, pale carmine, and finally into a 
faint blush that held its own a moment and then 
dimmed and turned black. Some of the streams pre- 
ferred to mingle together in a tangle of fantastic cir- 
cles, and then they looked something like the confusion 
of ropes one sees on a ship's deck when she has just 
taken in sail and dropped anchor — provided one can 
imagine those ropes on fire. 

"Through the glasses, the little fountains scat- 
tered about looked very beautiful. They boiled, and 
coughed, and spluttered, and discharged sprays of 
stringy red fire — of about the consistency of mush, for 
instance — from ten to fifteen feet into the air, along 
with a shower of brilliant white sparks — a quaint and 
unnatural mingling of gouts of blood and snowflakes." 



244 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

One can descend the sides. and approach surpris- 
ingly close to the flaming surface, the temperature of 
which, by the way, is 1750 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Such is "The House of Everlasting Fire" to-day. 
But who can say what it will be a year or a decade 
hence? A clogging or a shifting of the vents below 
sea-level, and Kilauea's lake of fire may become again 
explosive. Who will deny that Kilauea may not soar 
even above Mauna Loa? Stranger things have hap- 
pened before this in the Islands of Surprise. 



THE SEDIMENTARY NATIONAL PARKS 



XII 

ON SEDIMENTARY ROCK IN SCENERY 

THE national parks which are wrought in sedimen- 
tary rocks are Glacier, Mesa Verde, Hot Springs, 
Piatt, Wind Cave, Sully's Hill, and Grand Canyon. 
Zion National Monument is carved from sedimentary 
rock; also several distinguished reservations in our 
southwest which conserve natural bridges and petri- 
fied forests. 

Sedimentary rocks have highly attractive scenic 
quahty. Lying in strata usually horizontal but often 
incHned by earth movements, sometimes even stand- 
ing on end, they form marked and pleasing contrasts 
with the heavy massing of the igneous rocks and the 
graceful undulations and occasional sharp-pointed sum- 
mits of the lavas. 

As distinguished from igneous rocks, which form 
under pressure in the earth's hot interior, and from 
lava, which results from volcanic eruption when fluid 
igneous rocks are released from pressure, sedimentary 
rocks are formed by the solidification of precipitations 
in water, like limestone; or from material resulting 
from rock disintegrations washed down by streams, 
like sandstone and shale. The beds in which they lie 
one above another exhibit a wide range of tint and 

247 



248 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

texture, often forming spectacles of surpassing beauty 
and grandeur. 

These strata tend to cleave vertically, sometimes 
producing an appearance suggestive of masonry, fre- 
quently forming impressive cliffs; but often they lie 
in unbroken beds of great area. When a number of 
well-defined strata cleave vertically, and one end of 
the series sags below the other, or lifts above it, the 
process which geologists call faulting, the scenic effect 
is varied and striking; sometimes, as in Glacier Na- 
tional Park, it is puzzling and amazing. 

Many granitic and volcanic landscapes are varie- 
gated in places by accidental beds of sedimentary 
rock; and conversely occasional sedimentary land- 
scapes are set off by intrusions of igneous rocks. 

Besides variety of form, sedimentary rocks fur- 
nish a wide range of color derived from mineral dyes 
dissolved out of rocks by erosion. The gorgeous tint 
of the Vermilion Cliff in Utah and Arizona, the reds and 
greens of the Grand Canyon and Glacier National Park, 
the glowing chffs of the Canyon de Chelly, and the 
variegated hues of the Painted Desert are examples 
which have become celebrated. 

Geologists distinguish many kinds of sedimentary 
rocks. Scenically, we need consider only four: lime- 
stone, conglomerate, sandstone, and shale. 

Limestone is calcium carbonate derived principally 
from sea-water, sometimes from fresh water, either by 
the action of microscopic organisms which absorb it for 
their shells, or occasionally by direct precipitation from 



ON SEDIMENTARY ROCK IN SCENERY 249 

saturated solutions. The sediment from organisms, 
which is the principal source of American scenic lime- 
stones, collects as ooze in shallow lakes or seas, and 
slowly hardens when lifted above the water-level. 
Limestone is a common and prominent scenic rock; 
generally it is gray or blue and weathers pale yellow. 
Moisture seeping in from above often reduces soluble 
minerals which drain away, leaving caves which some- 
times have enormous size. 

The other sedimentary rocks which figure promi- 
nently in landscape are products of land erosion which 
rivers sweep into seas or lakes, where they are promptly 
deposited. The coarse gravels which naturally fall 
first become conglomerate when cemented by the ac- 
tion of chemicals in water. The finer sandy particles 
become sandstone. The fine mud, which deposits last, 
eventually hardens into shale. 

Shale has many varieties, but is principally hard- 
ened clay; it tends to split into slate-like plates each 
the thickness of its original deposit. It is usually dull 
brown or slate color, but sometimes, as in Glacier Na- 
tional Park and the Grand Canyon, shows a variety of 
more or less brilliant colors and, by weathering, a wide 
variety of kindred tints. 

Sandstone, which forms wherever moving water 
or wind has collected sands, and pressure or chemical 
action has cemented them, is usually buff, but some- 
times is brilliantly colored. 

The processes of Nature have mixed the earth's 
scenic elements in seemingly inextricable confusion, 



250 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

and the task of the geologist has been colossal. For- 
tunately for us, the elements of scenery are few, and 
their larger combinations broad and simple. Once 
the mind has grasped the outline and the processes, 
and the eye has learned to distinguish elements and 
recognize forms, the world is recreated for us. 



XIII 

GLACIERED PEAKS AND PAINTED SHALES 

Glacier National Park, Northwestern Montana. 
Area, 1,534 Square Miles 

I 

TO say that Glacier National Park is the Canadian 
Rockies done in Grand Canyon colors is to ex- 
press a small part of a complicated fact. Glacier is 
so much less and more. It is less in its exhibit of ice 
and snow. Both are dying glacial regions, and Glacier 
is hundreds of centuries nearer the end; no longer can 
it display snowy ranges in August and long, sinuous 
Alaska-like glaciers at any time. Nevertheless, it has 
its glaciers, sixty or more of them perched upon high 
rocky shelves, the beautiful shrunken reminders of 
one-time monsters. Also it has the precipice-walled 
cirques and painted, lake-studded valleys which these 
monsters left for the enjoyment of to-day. 

It is these cirques and valleys which constitute 
Glacier's unique feature, which make it incomparable 
of its kind. Glacier's innermost sanctuaries of grandeur 
are comfortably accessible and intimately enjoyable 
for more than two months each summer. The great- 
est places of the Canadian Rockies are never accessible 
comfortably; alpinists may clamber over their icy 

crevasses and scale their slippery heights in August, 

251 



252 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

but the usual traveller will view their noblest spec- 
tacles from hotel porches or valley trails. 

This comparison is useful because both regions are 
parts of the same geological and scenic development in 
which Glacier may be said to be scenically, though by 
no means geologically, completed and the Canadian 
Rockies still in the making. A hundred thousand 
years or more from now the Canadian Rockies may have 
reached, except for coloring, the present scenic state of 
Glacier. 

Glacier National Park hangs down from the 
Canadian boundary-line in northwestern Montana, 
where it straddles the continental divide. Adjoining 
it on the north is the Waterton Lakes Park, Canada. 
The Blackfeet Indian Reservation borders it on the 
east. Its southern boundary is Marias Pass, through 
which the Great Northern Railway crosses the crest 
of the Rocky Mountains. Its western boundary is 
the North Fork of the Flathead River. The park 
contains fifteen hundred and thirty-four square miles. 

Communication between the east and west sides 
within the park is only by trail across passes over the 
continental divide. 

There are parts of America quite as distinguished 
as Glacier: Mount McKinley, for its enormous snowy 
mass and stature; Yosemite, for the quality of its 
valley's beauty; Mount Rainier, for its massive radi- 
ating glaciers; Crater Lake, for its color range in pearls 
and blues; Grand Canyon, for its stupendous painted 
gulf. But there is no part of America or the Americas, 



GLACIERED PEAKS 253 

or of the world, to match it of its kind. In respect to 
the particular wondrous thing these glaciers of old 
left behind them when they shrank to shelved trifles, 
there is no other. At Glacier one sees what he never 
saw elsewhere and never will see again — except at 
Glacier. There are mountains everywhere, but no 
others carved into shapes quite like these; cirques in 
all lofty ranges, but not cirques just such as these; 
and because of these unique bordering highlands there 
are nowhere else lakes having the particular kind of 
charm possessed by Glacier's lakes. 

Visitors seldom comprehend Glacier; hence they 
are mute, or praise in generaUties or vague superla- 
tives. Those who have not seen other mountains 
find the unexpected and are puzzled. Those who have 
seen other mountains fail to understand the difference 
in these. I have never heard comparison with any 
region except the Canadian Rockies, and this seldom 
very intelligent. "I miss the big glaciers and snowy 
mountain- tops," says the traveller of one type. "You 
can really see something here besides snow, and how 
stunning it all is!" says the traveller of another type. 
"My God, man, where are your artists?" cried an 
Englishman who had come to St. Mary Lake to spend 
a night and was finishing his week. "They ought to 
be here in regiments. Not that this is the greatest 
thing in the world, but that there's nothing else in 
the world like it." Yet this emotional traveller, who 
had seen the Himalayas, Andes, and Canadian Rockies, 
could not tell me clearly why it was different. Neither 



254 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

could the others explain why they liked it better than 
the Canadian Rockies, or why its beauty puzzled and 
disturbed them. It is only he whom intelligent travel 
has educated to analyze and distinguish who sees in 
the fineness and the extraordinary distinction of 
Glacier's mountain forms the completion of the more 
heroic undevelopment north of the border. 

II 

The elements of Glacier's personality are so un- 
usual that it will be difficult, if not impossible, to 
make phrase describe it. Comparison fails. Pho- 
tographs will help, but not very efficiently, because 
they do not convey its size, color, and reality; or per- 
haps I should say its unreality, for there are places 
like Two Medicine Lake in still pale mid-morning, 
St. Mary Lake during one of its gold sunsets, and the 
cirques of the South Fork of the Belly River under 
all conditions which never can seem actual. 

To picture Glacier as nearly as possible, imagine 
two mountain ranges roughly parallel in the north, 
where they pass the continental divide between them 
across a magnificent high intervening valley, and, in 
the south, merging into a wild and apparently plan- 
less massing of high peaks and ranges. Imagine these 
mountains repeating everywhere huge pyramids, enor- 
mous stone gables, elongated cones, and many other 
unusual shapes, including numerous saw-toothed edges 
which rise many thousand feet upward from swelling 



GLACIERED PEAKS 255 

sides, and suggest nothing so much as overturned keel- 
boats. Imagine ranges glacier-bitten alternately on 
either side with cirques of three or four thousand feet 
of precipitous depth. Imagine these cirques often so 
nearly meeting that the intervening walls are knife- 
like edges; miles of such walls carry the continental 
divide, and occasionally these cirques meet and the 
intervening wall crumbles and leaves a pass across the 
divide. Imagine places where cirque walls have been 
so bitten outside as well as in that they stand like 
amphitheatres builded up from foundations instead of 
gouged out of rock from above. 

Imagine these mountains plentifully snow-spat- 
tered upon their northern slopes and bearing upon 
their shoulders many small and beautiful glaciers 
perched upon rock-shelves above and back of the 
cirques left by the greater glaciers of which they are the 
remainders. These glaciers are nearly always wider 
than they are long; of these I have seen only three 
with elongated lobes. One is the Blackfeet Glacier, 
whose interesting west lobe is conveniently situated 
for observation south of Gunsight Lake, and another, 
romantically beautiful Agassiz Glacier, in the far 
northwest of the park, whose ice-currents converge 
in a tongue which drops steeply to its snout. These 
elongations are complete miniatures, each exhibiting 
in little more than half a mile of length all usual gla- 
cial phenomena, including caves and ice-falls. Occa- 
sionally, as on the side of Mount Jackson at Gunsight 
Pass and east of it, one notices small elongated gla- 



2 56 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

ciers occupying clefts in steep slopes. The largest and 
most striking of these tongued glaciers is the western- 
most of the three Carter Glaciers on the slopes of 
Mount Carter. It cascades its entire length into Bow- 
man Valley, and Marius R. Campbell's suggestion that 
it should be renamed the Cascading Glacier deserves 
consideration. 

Imagine deep rounded valleys emerging from these 
cirques and twisting snakelike among enormous and 
sometimes grotesque rock masses which often are in- 
conceivably twisted and tumbled, those of each drain- 
age-basin converging fanlike to its central valley. 
Sometimes a score or more of cirques, great and small, 
unite their valley streams for the making of a river; 
seven principal valleys, each the product of such a 
group, emerge from the east side of the park, thirteen 
from the west. 

Imagine hundreds of lakes whose waters, fresh- 
run from snow-field and glacier, brilliantly reflect the 
odd surrounding landscape. Each glacier has its lake 
or lakes of robin's-egg blue. Every successive shelf 
of every glacial stairway has its lake — one or more. 
And every valley has its greater lake or string of lakes. 
Glacier is pre-eminently the park of lakes. When all 
is said and done, they constitute its most distinguished 
single element of supreme beauty. For several of 
them enthusiastic admirers loudly claim world pre- 
eminence. 

And finally imagine this picture done in soft 
glowing colors — not only the blue sky, the flowery 



GLACIERED PEAKS 257 

meadows, the pine-green valleys, and the innumerable 
many-hued waters, but the rocks, the mountains, and 
the cirques besides. The glaciers of old penetrated the 
most colorful depths of earth's skin, the very ancient 
Algonkian strata, that from which a part of the Grand 
Canyon also was carved. At this point, the rocks ap- 
pear in four differently colored layers. The lowest of 
these is called the Altyn limestone. There are about 
sixteen hundred feet of it, pale blue within, weather- 
ing pale buff. Whole yellow mountains of this rock 
hang upon the eastern edge of the park. Next above 
the Altyn lies thirty-four hundred feet of Appekunny 
argillite, or dull-green shale. The tint is pale, deep- 
ening to that familiar in the lower part of the Grand 
Canyon. It weathers every darkening shade to very 
dark greenish-brown. Next above that lies twenty- 
two hundred feet of Grinnell argillite, or red shale, a 
dull rock of varying pinks which weathers many shades 
of red and purple, deepening in places almost to black. 
There is some gleaming white quartzite mixed with 
both these shales. Next above lies more than four 
thousand feet of Siyeh limestone, very solid, very 
massive, iron-gray with an insistent flavor of yellow, 
and weathering buff. This heavy stratum is the most 
impressive part of the Glacier landscape. Horizon- 
tally through its middle runs a dark broad ribbon of 
diorite, a rock as hard as granite, which once, while 
molten, burst from below and forced its way between 
horizontal beds of limestone; and occasionally, as in 
the Swiftcurrent and Triple Divide Passes, there are 



258 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

dull iron-black lavas in heavy twisted masses. Above 
all of these colored strata once lay still another shale 
of very brilliant red. Fragments of this, which ge- 
ologists call the Kintla formation, may be seen top- 
ping mountains here and there in the northern part of 
the park. 

Imagine these rich strata hung east and west 
across the landscape and sagging deeply in the middle, 
so that a horizontal line would cut all colors diagonally. 

Now imagine a softness of line as well as color 
resulting probably from the softness of the rock; there 
is none of the hard insistence, the uncompromising 
definiteness of the granite landscape. And imagine 
further an impression of antiquity, a feeling akin to 
that with which one enters a mediaeval ruin or sees 
the pyramids of Egypt. Only here is the look of im- 
mense, unmeasured, immeasurable age. More than 
at any place except perhaps the rim of the Grand 
Canyon does one seem to stand in the presence of the 
infinite; an instinct which, while it bafHes analysis, is 
sound, for there are few rocks of the earth's skin so 
aged as these ornate shales and limestones. 

And now, at last, you can imagine Glacier ! 

Ill 

But, with Glacier, this is not enough. To see, to 
realize in full its beauty, still leaves one puzzled. One 
of the peculiarities of the landscape, due perhaps to its 
differences, is its insistence upon explana.tion. How 



GLACIERED PEAKS 259 

came this prehistoric plain so etched with cirques and 
valleys as to leave standing only worm-like crests, 
knife-edged walls, amphitheatres, and isolated peaks? 
The answer is the story of a romantic episode in the 
absorbing history of America's making. 

Somewhere between forty and six hmidred million 
years ago, according to the degree of conservatism con- 
trolling the geologist who does the calculating, these 
lofty mountains were deposited in the shape of muddy 
sediments on the bottom of shallow fresh-water lakes, 
whose waves left many ripple marks upon the soft 
muds of its shores, fragments of which, hardened now 
to shale, are frequently found by tourists. So ancient 
was the period that these deposits lay next above the 
primal Archean rocks, and marked, therefore, almost 
the beginning of accepted geological history. Life was 
then so nearly at its beginnings that the forms which 
Walcott found in the Siyeh limestone were not at first 
fully accepted as organic. 

Thereafter, during a time so long that none may 
even estimate it, certainly for many millions of years, 
the history of the region leaves traces of no extraor- 
dinary change. It sank possibly thousands of feet be- 
neath the fresh waters tributary to the sea which once 
swept from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic, and 
accumulated there sediments which to-day are scenic 
limestones and shales, and doubtless other sediments 
above these which have wholly passed away. It 
may have alternated above and below water-level 
many times, as our southwest has done. Even- 



26o THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

tually, under earth-pressures concerning whose cause 
many theories have lived and died, it rose to remain 
until our times. 

Then, millions of years ago, but still recently as 
compared with the whole vast lapse we are consider- 
ing, came the changes which seem dramatic to us as 
we look back upon them accomplished; but which 
came to pass so slowly that no man, had man then 
lived, could have noticed a single step of progress in 
the course of a long life. Under earth-pressures the 
skin buckled and the Rocky Mountains rose. At 
some stage of this process the range cracked along its 
crest from what is now Marias Pass to a point just 
over the Canadian border, and, a couple of hundred 
miles farther north, from the neighborhood of Banff 
to the northern end of the Canadian Rockies. 

Then the great overthrust followed. Side-pres- 
sures of inconceivable power forced upward the west- 
em edge of this crack, including the entire crust from 
the Algonkian strata up, and thrust it over the eastern 
edge. During the overthrusting, which may have 
taken a million years, and during the millions of years 
since, the frosts have chiselled open and the rains have 
washed away all the overthrust strata, the accumula- 
tions of the geological ages from Algonkian times down, 
except only that one bottom layer. This alone re- 
mained for the three ice invasions of the Glacial Age 
to carve into the extraordinary area which is called 
to-day the Glacier National Park. 

The Lewis Overthrust, so called because it hap- 



GLACIERED PEAKS 261 

pened to the Lewis Range, is ten to fifteen miles wide. 
The eastern boundary of the park roughly defines its 
limit of progress. Its signs are plain to the eye taught 
to perceive them. The yellow mountains on the east- 
em edge near the gateway to Lake McDermott lie 
on top of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, whose 
surface is many millions of years younger and quite 
different in coloring. Similarly, Chief Mountain, at 
the entrance of the Belly River Valley, owes much of 
its remarkable distinction to the incompatibility of its 
form and color with the prairie upon which it lies 
but out of which it seems to burst. The bottom of 
McDermott Falls at Many Glacier Hotel is plainly a 
younger rock than the colored Algonkian limestones 
which form its brink. 

Perhaps thousands of years after the overthrust 
was accomplished another tremendous faulting still 
further modified the landscape of to-day. The over- 
thrust edge cracked lengthwise, this time west of the 
continental divide all the way from the Canadian line 
southward nearly to Marias Pass. The edge of the 
strata west of this crack sank perhaps many thousands 
of feet, leaving great precipices on the west side of the 
divide similar to those on the east side. There was 
this great difference, however, in what followed: the 
elongated gulf or ditch thus formed became filled with 
the deposits of later geologic periods. 

This whole process, which also was very slow in 
movement, is important in explaining the conforma- 
tion and scenic peculiarities of the west side of the 



262 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

park, which, as the tourist sees it to-day, is remarkably 
different from those of the east side. Here, the great 
limestone ranges, glaciered, cirqued, and precipiced as 
on the east side, suddenly give place to broad, un- 
dulating plains which constitute practically the whole 
of the great west side from the base of the mountains 
on the east to the valley of the Flathead which forms 
the park's western boundary. These plains are grown 
thickly with splendid forests. Cross ranges, largely 
glacier-built, stretch west from the high mountains, 
subsiding rapidly; and between these ranges lie long 
winding lakes, forest-grown to their edges, which carry 
the western drainage of the continental divide through 
outlet streams into the Flathead. 

The inconceivable lapse of time covered in these 
titanic operations of Nature and their excessive slow- 
ness of progress rob them of much of their dramatic 
quality. Perhaps an inch of distance was an extraor- 
dinary advance for the Lewis Overthrust to make in 
any ordinary year, and doubtless there were lapses of 
centuries when no measurable advance was made. 
Yet sometimes sudden settlings, accompanied by more 
or less extended earthquakes, must have visibly altered 
local landscapes. 

Were it possible, by some such mental fore- 
shortening as that by which the wizards of the screen 
compress a life into a minute, for imagination to 
hasten this progress into the compass of a few hours, 
how overwhelming would be the spectacle ! How 
tremendously would loom this advancing edge, which 



GLACIERED PEAKS 263 

at first we may conceive as having enormous thickness ! 
How it must have cracked, crumbled, and fallen in 
frequent titanic crashes as it moved forward. It does 
not need the imagination of Dore to picture this ad- 
vance, thus hastened in fancy, grim, relentless as death, 
its enormous towering head lost in eternal snows, its 
feet shaken by earthquakes, accumulating giant gla- 
ciers only to crush them into powder; resting, then 
pushing forward in slow, smashing, reverberating 
shoves. How the accumulations of all periods may 
be imagined crashing together into the depths! Si- 
lurian gastropods, strange Devonian fishes, enormous 
Triassic reptiles, the rich and varied shells of the 
Jurassic, the dinosaurs and primitive birds of Cre- 
taceous, the little early horses of Eocene, and Mi- 
ocene's camels and mastodons mingling their fossil 
remnants in a democracy of ruin to defy the eternal 
ages! 

It all happened, but unfortunately for a romantic 
conception, it did not happen with dramatic speed. 
Hundreds, thousands, sometimes millions of years in- 
tervened between the greater stages of progress which, 
with intervening lesser stages, merged into a seldom- 
broken quietude such as that which impresses to-day's 
visitor to the mountain-tops of Glacier National Park. 
And who can say that the landscape which to-day's 
visitor, with the inborn arrogance of man, looks upon 
as the thing which the ages have completed for his 
pleasure, may not merely represent a minor stage in a 
progress still more terrible? 



264 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

The grist of Creation*s past milling has disap- 
peared. The waters of heaven, collected and stored 
in snow-fields and glaciers to be released in seasonal 
torrents, have washed it all away. Not a sign remains 
to-day save here and there perhaps a fragment of 
Cretaceous coal. All has been ground to powder and 
carried off by flood and stream to enrich the soils and 
upbuild later strata in the drainage basins of the 
Saskatchewan, the Columbia, and the Mississippi. 

It is probable that little remained but the Algon- 
kian shales and limestones when the Ice Age sent 
southward the first of its three great invasions. Doubt- 
less already there were glaciers there of sorts, but the 
lowering temperatures which accompanied the ice- 
sheets developed local glaciers so great of size that only 
a few mountain- tops were left exposed. It was then 
that these extraordinary cirques were carved. There 
were three such periods during the Ice Age, between 
which and after which stream erosion resumed its un- 
tiring sway. The story of the ice is written high upon 
Glacier's walls and far out on the eastern plains. 

IV 

Into this wonderland the visitor enters by one of 
two roads. Either he leaves the railroad at Glacier 
Park on the east side of the continental divide or at 
Bel ton on the west side. In either event he can cross 
to the other side only afoot or on horseback over 
passes. The usual way in is through Glacier Park. 



GLACIERED PEAKS 265 

There is a large hotel at the station from which auto- 
mobile-stages run northward to chalets at Two Medicine 
Lake, the Cut Bank Valley, and St. Mary Lake, and 
to the Many Glacier Hotel and chalets at Lake McDer- 
mott. A road also reaches Lake McDermott from 
Canada by way of Babb, and Canadian visitors can 
reach the trails at the head of Waterton Lake by boat 
from their own Waterton Lakes Park. Those entering 
at Belton, where the park headquarters are located, 
j5nd chalets at the railroad-station and an excellent 
hotel near the head of Lake McDonald. There is also 
a comfortable chalet close to the Sperry Glacier. 

To see Glacier as thoroughly as Glacier deserves 
and to draw freely on its abundant resources of plea- 
sure and inspiration, one must travel the trails and pitch 
his tent where day's end brings him. But that does 
not mean that Glacier cannot be seen and enjoyed by 
those to whom comfortable hotel accommodations are 
a necessity, or even by those who find trail-travelling 
imoossible. 

Visitors, therefore, fall into three general classes, 
all of whom may study scenery which quite fully cov- 
ers the range of Glacier's natural phenomena and pe- 
culiar beauty. The largest of these classes consists 
of those who can travel, or think they can travel, only 
in vehicles, and can find satisfactory accommodations 
only in good hotels. The intermediate class includes 
those who can, at a pinch, ride ten or twelve miles on 
comfortably saddled horses which walk the trails at 
two or three miles an hour, and who do not object to 



266 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

the somewhat primitive but thoroughly comfortable 
overnight accommodations of the chalets. Finally 
comes the small class, which constantly will increase, 
of those who have the time and inclination to leave 
the beaten path with tent and camping outfit for the 
splendid wilderness and the places of supreme mag- 
nificence which are only for those who seek. 

The man, then, whose tendency to gout, let us say, 
forbids him ride a horse or walk more than a couple 
of easy miles a day may, nevertheless, miss nothing of 
Glacier's meaning and magnificence provided he takes 
the trouble to understand. But he must take the 
trouble; he must comprehend the few examples that 
he sees; this is his penalty for refusing the rich experi- 
ence of the trail, which, out of its very fulness, drives 
meaning home with little mental effort. His knowl- 
edge must be got from six places only which may be 
reached by vehicle, at least three of which, however, 
may be included among the world's great scenic 
places. He can find at Two Medicine, St. Mary, and 
McDermott superb examples of Glacier's principal 
scenic elements. 

Entering at Glacier Park, he will have seen the 
range from the plains, an important beginning; al- 
ready, approaching from the east, he has watched it 
grow wonderfully on the horizon. So suddenly do 
these painted mountains spring from the grassy plain 
that it is a relief to recognize in them the advance 
guard of the Lewis Overthrust, vast fragments of the 
upheavals of the depths pushed eastward by the cen- 



GLACIERED PEAKS 267 

turies to their final resting-places upon the surface of 
the prairie. From the hotel porches they glow gray 
and yellow and purple and rose and pink, according to 
the natural coloring of their parts and the will of the 
sun — a splendid ever-changing spectacle. 

The Two Medicine Country 

An hour's automobile-ride from Glacier Park 
Hotel will enable our traveller to penetrate the range 
at a point of supreme beauty and stand beside a chalet 
at the foot of Two Medicine Lake. He will face what 
appears to be a circular lake in a densely forested val- 
ley from whose shore rises a view of mountains which 
will take his breath. In the near centre stands a cone 
of enormous size and magnificence — Mount Rockwell 
— faintly blue, mistily golden, richly purple, dull silver, 
or red and gray, according to the favor of the hour and 
the sky. Upon its left and somewhat back rises a 
smaller similar cone, flatter but quite as perfectly 
proportioned, known as Grizzly Mountain, and upon 
its right less regular masses. In the background, con- 
necting all, are more distant mountains flecked with 
snow, the continental divide. Towering mountains 
close upon him upon both sides, that upon his right a 
celebrity in red argillite known as Rising Wolf. He 
sees all this from a beach of many-colored pebbles. 

Few casual visitors have more than a midday 
view of Two Medicine Lake, for the stage returns in 
the afternoon. The glory of the sunset and the won- 
der before sunrise are for the few who stay over at the 



268 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

chalet. The lover of the exquisite cannot do better, 
for, though beyond lie scenes surpassing this in the 
qualities which bring to the lips the shout of joy, I 
am convinced that nothing elsewhere equals the Two 
Medicine canvas in the perfection of delicacy. It is 
the Meissonier of Glacier. 

Nor can the student of Nature's processes afford 
to miss the study of Two Medicine's marvellously 
complete and balanced system of cirques and valleys 
— though this of course is not for the rheumatic trav- 
eller but for him who fears not horse and tent. Such 
an explorer will find thrills with every passing hour. 
Giant Mount Rockwell will produce one when a side- 
view shows that its apparent cone is merely the smaller 
eastern end of a ridge two miles long which culmi- 
nates in a towering summit on the divide; Pumpelly 
Filler, with the proportions of a monument when seen 
from near the lake, becomes, seen sideways, another 
long and exceedingly beautiful ridge; striking exam- 
ples, these, of the leavings of converging glaciers of 
old. Two Medicine Lake proves to be long and narrow, 
the chalet view being the long way, and Upper Two 
Medicine Lake proves to be an emerald-encircled pearl 
in a silvery-gray setting. The climax of such a sev- 
eral days' trip is a night among the coyotes at the head 
of the main valley and a morning upon Dawson Pass 
overlooking the indescribable tangle of peak, precipice, 
and canyon lying west, of the continental divide. 

Taken as a whole, the Two Medicine drainage- 
basin is an epitome of Glacier in miniature. To those 



GLACIERED PEAKS 269 

entering the park on the east side and seeing it first 
it becomes an admirable introduction to the greater 
park. To those who have entered on the west side 
and finish here it is an admirable farewell review, 
especially as its final picture sounds the note of scenic 
perfection. Were there nothing else of Glacier, this 
spot would become in time itself a world celebrity. 
Incidentally, exceedingly lively Eastern brook-trout 
will afford an interesting hour to one who floats a fly 
down the short stream into the lakelet at the foot of 
Two Medicine Lake not far below the chalet. There 
are also fish below Trick Falls. 

The Spectacle of St. Mary 

St. Mary Lake, similarly situated in the outlet 
valley of a much greater group of cirques north of 
Two Medicine, offers a picture as similar in kind as 
two canvases are similar which have been painted by 
the same hand; but they widely differ in composition 
and magnificence; Two Medicine's preciousness yields 
to St. Mary's elemental grandeur. The steamer which 
brings our rheumatic traveller from the motor-stage 
at the foot of the lake lands him at the upper chalet 
group, appropriately Swiss, which finds vantage on a 
rocky promontory for the view of the divide. Gigan- 
tic mountains of deep-red argillite, grotesquely carved, 
close in the sides, and with lake and sky wonderfully 
frame the amazing central picture of pointed pyra- 
mids, snow-fields, hanging glaciers, and silvery ridges 
merging into sky. Seen on the way into Glacier, 



270 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

St. Mary is a prophecy which will not be fulfilled else- 
where in charm though often far exceeded in degree. 
Seen leaving Glacier, it combines with surpassing 
novelty scenic elements whose possibilities of further- 
gorgeous combination the trip through the park has 
seemed to exhaust. 

The St. Mary picture is impossible to describe. 
Its colors vary with the hours and the atmosphere's 
changing conditions. It is silver, golden, mauve, blue, 
lemon, misty white, and red by turn. It is seen clearly 
in the morning with the sun behind you. Afternoons 
and sunsets offer theatrical effects, often baffling, 
always lovely and different. Pointed Fusillade and 
peaked Reynolds Mountains often lose their tops in 
lowering mists. So, often, does Going-to-the-Sun 
Mountain in the near-by right foreground. So, not 
so often, does keel-shaped Citadel Mountain on the 
near-by left; also, at times, majestic Little Chief, he 
of lofty mien and snow-dashed crown, and stolid Red 
Eagle, whose gigantic reflection reddens a mile of 
waters. It is these close-up monsters even more than 
the colorful ghosts of the Western horizon which stamp 
St. Mary's personality. 

From the porches of the chalets and the deck of 
the steamer in its evening tour of the lake-end the 
traveller will note the enormous size of those upper 
valleys which once combined their glaciers as now they 
do their streams. He will guess that the glacier which 
once swept through the deep gorge in whose bottom 
now lies St. Mary Lake was several thousand feet in 



GLACIERED PEAKS 271 

thickness. He will long to examine those upper valleys 
and reproduce in imagination the amazing spectacle of 
long ago. But they are not for him. That vision is 
reserved for those who ride the trails. 

The Scenic Climax of the Swiftcurrent 

Again passing north, the automobile-stage reaches 
road's end at McDermott Lake, the fan-handle of the 
Swiftcurrent drainage-basin. Overlooking a magnifi- 
cent part of each of its contributing valleys, the lake, 
itself supremely beautiful, may well deserve its repu- 
tation as Glacier's scenic centre. I have much sym- 
pathy with the thousands who claim supremacy for 
McDermott Lake. Lake McDonald has its wonder- 
fully wooded shores, its majestic length and august 
vista; Helen Lake its unequalled wildness; Bowman 
Lake its incomparable view of glacier-shrouded divide. 
But McDermott has something of everything; it is 
a composite, a mosaic masterpiece with every stone a 
gem. There is no background from which one looks 
forward to "the view." Its horizon contains three 
hundred and sixty degrees of view. From the towering 
south gable of that rock-temple to God the Creator, 
which the map calls Mount Gould, around the circle, 
it offers an unbroken panorama in superlative. 

In no sense by way of comparison, which is ab- 
surd between scenes so different, but merely to help 
realization by contrast with what is well known, let 
us recall the Yosemite Valley. Yosemite is a valley, 
Swiftcurrent an enclosure. Yosemite is gray and 



272 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

shining, Swiftcurrent richer far in color. Yosemite's 
walls are rounded, peaked, and polished, Swiftcurrent's 
toothed, torn, and crumbling; the setting sun shines 
through holes worn by frost and water in the living rock. 
Yosemite guards her western entrance with a shaft of 
gray granite rising thirty-six hundred feet from the 
valley floor, and her eastern end by granite domes of 
five thousand and six thousand feet; Swiftcurrent's 
rocks gather round her central lake — Altyn, thirty-two 
hundred feet above the lake's level; Henkel, thirty- 
eight hundred feet; Wilbur, forty-five hundred feet; 
Grinnell, four thousand; Gould, forty-seven hundred; 
Allen, forty-five hundred — all of colored strata, green 
at base, then red, then gray. Yosemite has its wind- 
ing river and waterfalls, Swiftcurrent its lakes and 
glaciers. 

Swiftcurrent has the repose but not the softness of 
Yosemite. Yosemite is unbelievably beautiful. Swift- 
current inspires wondering awe. 

McDermott Lake, focus point of all this natural 
glory, is scarcely a mile long, and narrow. It may be 
vivid blue and steel-blue and milky-blue, and half a 
dozen shades of green and pink all within twice as 
many minutes, according to the whim of the breeze, 
the changing atmosphere, and the clouding of the sun. 
Often it suggests nothing so much as a pool of dull- 
green paint. Or it may present a reversed image of 
mountains, glaciers, and sky in their own coloring. 
Or at sunset it may turn lemon or purple or crimson 
or orange, or a blending of all. Or, with rushing storm- 




5 H 



GLACIERED PEAKS 273 

clouds, it may quite suddenly lose every hint of any 
color, and become a study in black, white, and inter- 
mediate grays. 

There are times when, from hotel porch, rock, or 
boat, the towering peaks and connecting limestone 
walls become suddenly so fairylike that they lose all 
sense of reality, seeming to merge into their background 
of sky, from which, nevertheless, they remain sharply 
differentiated. The rapidity and the variety of change 
in the appearance of the water is nothing to that in 
the appearance of these magical walls and mountains. 
Now near, now distant; now luring, now forbidding; 
now gleaming as if with their own light; now gloomy 
in threat, they lose not their hold on the eye for a 
moment. The unreality of McDermott Lake, the sense 
it often imparts of impossibility, is perhaps its most 
striking feature. One suspects he dreams, awake. 

The Scenic Circle 

To realize the spot as best we may, let us pause 
on the bridge among those casting for trout below the 
upper fall and glance around. To our left rises Allen 
Mountain, rugged, irregular, forest-clothed half-way 
up its forty-five hundred feet of elevation above the 
valley floor. Beyond it a long gigantic wall sets in 
at right angles, blue, shining, serrated, supporting, 
apparently on the lake edge, an enormous gable end of 
gray limestone banded with black diorite, a veritable 
personality comparable with Yosemite's most famous 
rocks. This is Mount Gould. Next is the Grinnell 



274 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

Glacier, hanging glistening in the air, dripping water- 
falls, backgrounded by the gnawed top of the venerable 
Garden Wall. Then comes in turn the majestic mass 
of Mount Grinnell, four miles long, culminating at the 
lakeside in an enormous parti-colored pyramid more 
impressive from the hotel than even Rockwell is from 
Two Medicine chalets. Then, upon its right, appears. 
a wall which is the unnamed continuation of the 
Garden Wall, and, plastered against the side of Swift- 
current Mountain, three small hanging glaciers, seem- 
ing in the distance like two long parallel snow-banks. 
Then Mount Wilbur, another giant pyramid, gray, 
towering, massively carved, grandly proportioned, 
kingly in bearing ! Again upon its right emerges still 
another continuation, also unnamed, of the Garden 
Wall, this section loftiest of all and bitten deeply by 
the ages. A part of it is instantly recognized from the 
hotel window as part of the sky-line surrounding famous 
Iceberg Lake. Its right is lost behind the nearer slopes 
of red Mount Henkel, which swings back upon our right, 
bringing the eye nearly to its starting-point. A glance 
out behind between mountains, upon the limitless 
lake-dotted plain, completes the scenic circle. 

McDermott Lake, by which I here mean the Swift- 
current enclosure as seen from the Many Glacier 
Hotel, is illustrative of all of Glacier. There are wilder 
spots, by far, some which frighten; there are places of 
nobler beauty, though as I write I know I shall deny 
it the next time I stand on McDermott's shores; there 
are supreme places which at first glance seem to have 



GLACIERED PEAKS 275 

no kinship with any other place on earth. Neverthe- 
less, McDermott contains all of Glacier's elements, all 
her charm, and practically all her combinations. It 
is the place of places to study Glacier. It is also a 
place to dream away idle weeks. 

So he who cannot ride or walk the trails may still 
see and understand Glacier in her majesty. Besides 
the places I have mentioned he may see, from the Cut 
Bank Chalet, a characteristic forested valley of great 
beauty, and at Lewis's hotel on Lake McDonald the 
finest spot accessible upon the broad west side, the 
playground, as the east side is the show-place, of hun- 
dreds of future thousands. 

So many are the short horseback trips from 
Many Glacier Hotel to places of significance and beauty 
that it is hard for the timid to withstand the tempta- 
tion of the trail. Four miles will reach Grinnell Lake 
at the foot of its glacier, six miles will penetrate the 
Cracker Lake Gorge at the perpendicular base of 
Mount Siyeh, eight miles will disclose the astonishing 
spectacle of Iceberg Lake, and nine miles wiU cross the 
Swiftcurrent Pass to the Granite Park Chalet. 

Iceberg Lake Typical of All 

In some respects Iceberg Lake is Glacier's supreme 
spectacle. There are few spots so wild. There may 
be no easily accessible spot in the world half so wild. 
Imagine a horseshoe of perpendicular rock wall, twenty- 
seven hundred to thirty-five hundred feet high, a gla- 
cier in its inmost curve, a lake of icebergs in its centre. 



276 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

The back of the tower-peak of Mount Wilbur is the 
southern end of this horseshoe. This enclosure was 
not built up from below, as it looks, but bitten down 
within and without; it was left. On the edge of the 
lake in early July the sun sets at four o'clock. 

Stupendous as Iceberg Lake is as a spectacle, its 
highest purpose is illustrative. It explains Glacier. 
Here by this lakeside, fronting the glacier's floating 
edge and staring up at the jagged top in front and on 
either side, one comprehends at last. The appalling 
story of the past seems real. 

The Climax at Granite Park 

It is at Granite Park that one realizes the geog- 
raphy of Glacier. You have crossed the continental 
divide and emerged upon a lofty abutment just west of 
it. You are very nearly in the park's centre, and on 
the margin of a forested canyon of impressive breadth 
and depth, lined on either side by mountain monsters, 
and reaching from Mount Cannon at the head of Lake 
McDonald northward to the Alberta plain. The 
western wall of this vast avenue is the Livingston 
Range. Its eastern wall is the Lewis Range. Both 
in turn carry the continental divide, which crosses the 
avenue from Livingston to Lewis by way of low- 
crowned Flattop Mountain, a few miles north of where 
you stand, and back to Livingston by way of Clements 
Mountain, a few miles south. Opposite you, across 
the chasm, rises snowy Heavens Peak. Southwest 
lies Lake McDonald, hidden by Heavens' shoulder. 




From a photograph hy Ilayiies 

PTARMIGAN LAKE AND MOUNT WILBUR, GLACIER NATIONAL PARK 




From J photof^niph hy A. J. Thiri 

SCOOPED HOTH SIDES BY GIANT GLACIERS 
Wall on the left encloses Iceberg Lake; on the right is the Belly River abyss; Glacier National Park 



GLACIERED PEAKS 277 

South is Logan Pass, carrying another trail across the 
divide, and disclosing hanging gardens beyond on 
Reynolds' eastern slope. Still south of that, unseen 
from here, is famous Gunsight Pass. 

It is a stirring spectacle. But wait. A half- 
hour's climb to the summit of Swiftcurrent Mountain 
close at hand (the chalet is most of the way up, to start 
with) and all of Glacier lies before you like a model in 
relief. Here you see the Iceberg Cirque from without 
and above. The Belly River chasm yawns enormously. 
Mount Cleveland, monarch of the region, flaunts his 
crown of snow among his near-by court of only lesser 
monsters. The Avenue of the Giants deeply splits the 
northern half of the park, that land of extravagant 
accent, mysterious because so little known; the Gla- 
cier of tourists lying south. A marvellous spectacle, 
this, indeed, and one which clears up many misconcep- 
tions. The Canadian Rockies hang on the misty 
northern horizon, the Montana plains float eastward, 
the American Rockies roll south and west. 

Over Gunsight Pass 

To me one of the most stirring sights in all Glacier 
is the view of Gunsight Pass from the foot of Gunsight 
Lake. The immense glaciered uplift of Mount Jack- 
son on the south of the pass, the wild whitened sides 
of Gunsight Mountain opposite dropping to the up- 
turned strata of red shale at the water's edge, the pass 
itself — so weU named — perched above the dark preci- 
pice at the lake's head, the corkscrew which the trail 



278 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

makes up Jackson's perpendicular flank and its pas- 
sage across a mammoth snow-bank high in air — these 
in contrast with the silent black water of the sunken 
lake produce ever the same thrill however often seen. 
The look back, too, once the pass is gained, down St. 
Mary's gracious valley to Going-to-the-Sun Mountain 
and its horizon companions! Sun Mountain (for 
short), always a personality, is never from any other 
point of view so undeniably the crowned majesty as 
from Gunsight Pass. And finally, looking forward, 
which in this speaking means westward, the first 
revelation of Lake Ellen Wilson gives a shock of awed 
astonishment whose memory can never pass. 

Truly, Gunsight is a pass of many sensations, for, 
leaving Lake Ellen Wilson and its eighteen hundred 
feet of vertical frothing outlet, the westward trail 
crosses the shoulder of Lincoln Peak to the Sperry 
Glacier and its inviting chalet (where the biggest hoary 
marmot I ever saw sat upon my dormitory porch), 
and, eight miles farther down the mountain, beautiful 
Lake McDonald. 

Destiny of the West Side 

Although it was settled earlier. Glacier's west side 
is less developed than its east side; this because, for 
the most part, its scenery is less sensational though no 
less gorgeously beautiful. Its five long lakes, of which 
McDonald is much the longest and largest, head up 
toward the snowy monsters of the divide; their thin 
bodies wind leisurely westward among superbly for- 



GLACIERED PEAKS 279 

ested slopes. Its day is still to come. It is the land 
of the bear, the moose, the deer, the trout, and summer 
leisure. Its destiny is to become Glacier's vacation 
playground. 

The Coming Splendors of the North 

The wild north side of Glacier, its larger, bigger- 
featured, and occasionally greater part, is not yet for 
the usual tourist; for many years from this writing, 
doubtless, none will know it but the traveller with tent 
and pack-train. He alone, and may his tribe increase, 
will enjoy the gorgeous cirques and canyons of the 
Belly River, the wild quietude of the Waterton Valley, 
the regal splendors of Brown Pass, and the headwater 
spectacles of the Logging, Quartz, Bowman, and Kintla 
valleys. He alone will realize that here is a land of 
greater power, larger measures, and bigger horizons. 

And yet with Kintla comes climax. Crossing the 
border the mountains subside, the glaciers disappear. 
Canada's Waterton Lakes Park begins at our climax 
and merges in half a dozen miles into the great prairies 
of Alberta. It is many miles northwest before the 
Canadian Rockies assume proportions of superlative 
scenic grandeur. 

The Belly River Valleys 

To realize the growing bigness of the land north- 
ward one has only to cross the wall from Iceberg Lake 
into the Belly River canyon. "Only," indeed! In 
191 7 it took us forty miles of detour outside the park. 



28o THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

even under the shadow of Chief Mountain, to cross the 
wall from Iceberg Lake, the west-side precipice of which 
is steeper even than the east. The BeUy River drain- 
age-basin is itself bigger, and its mountains bulk in 
proportion. Eighteen glaciers contribute to the making 
of perhaps as many lakes. The yeUow mountains of 
its northern slopes invade Canada. The borders of its 
principal valley are two monster mountains, Cleve- 
land, the greatest in the park for mass and height and 
intricate outline; the other, Merritt, in some respects 
the most interesting of Glacier's abundant collection 
of majestic peaks. 

There are three valleys. The North Fork finds 
its way quickly into Canada. The Middle Fork rises 
in a group of glaciers high under the continental divide 
and descends four giant steps, a lake upon each step, 
to two greater lakes of noble aspect in the valley 
bottom. The South Fork emerges from Helen Lake 
deep in the gulf below the Ahem Glacier across the 
Garden WaU from Iceberg Lake. Between the Mid- 
dle and South Forks Mount Merritt rises 9,944 feet 
in altitude, minareted like a mediaeval fort and hollow 
as a bowl, its gaping chasm hung with glaciers. 

This is the valley of abundance. The waters are 
large, their trout many and vigorous; the bottoms are 
extravagantly rich in grasses and flowers; the forests 
are heavy and full-bodied ; there is no open place, even 
miles beyond its boundaries, which does not offer views 
of extraordinary nobility. Every man who enters it 
becomes enthusiastically prophetic of its future. After 



GLACIERED PEAKS 281 

all, the Belly River country is easily visited. A 
leisurely horseback journey from McDermott, that is 
all; three days among the strange yellow mountains 
of the overthrust's eastern edge, including two after- 
noons among the fighting trout of Kennedy Creek and 
Slide Lake, and two nights in camp among the wild bare 
arroyos of the Algonkian invasion of the prairie — an 
interesting prelude to the fulness of wilderness life to 
come. 

I dwell upon the Belly valleys because their size, 
magnificence, and accessibility suggest a future of 
public use; nothing would be easier, for instance, than 
a road from Babb to join the road already in from 
Canada. The name naturally arouses curiosity. Why 
Belly? Was it not the Anglo-Saxon frontier's pro- 
nunciation of the Frenchman's original Belle? The 
river, remember, is mainly Canadian. Surely in all 
its forks and tributaries it was and is the Beautiful 
River. 

The Avenue of the Giants 

The Avenue of the Giants looms in any forecast 
of Glacier's future. It really consists of two valleys 
joined end on at their beginnings on Flattop Mountain; 
McDonald Creek flowing south, Little Kootenai flow- 
ing north. The road which will replace the present 
trail up this avenue from the much-travelled south to 
Waterton Lake and Canada is a matter doubtless of 
a distant future, but it is so manifestly destiny that it 
must be accepted as the key to the greater Glacier to 



282 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

come. Uniting at its southern end roads from both 
sides of the divide, it will reach the Belly valleys by 
way of Ahem Pass, the Bowman and Kintla valleys 
by way of Brown Pass, and will terminate at the im- 
portant tourist settlement which is destined to grow 
at the splendid American end of Waterton Lake. In- 
cidentally it will become an important motor-highway 
between Canada and America. Until then, though all 
these are now accessible by trail, the high distinction 
of the Bowman and the Kintla valleys' supreme ex- 
pression of the glowing genius of this whole country wiU 
remain unknown to any considerable body of travellers. 

The Climax of Bowman and Kintla 

And, after all, the Bowman and Kintla regions are 
Glacier's ultimate expression, Bowman of her beauty, 
Kintla of her majesty. No one who has seen the foam- 
ing cascades of Mount Peabody and a lost outlet of 
the lofty Boulder Glacier emerging dramatically 
through Hole-in-the-Wall Fall, for all the world like 
a horsetail fastened upon the face of a cliff, who has 
looked upon the Guardhouse from Brown Pass and 
traced the distant windings of Bowman Lake between 
the fluted precipice of Rainbow Peak and the fading 
slopes of Indian Ridge; or has looked upon the mighty 
monolith of Kintla Peak rising five thousand feet 
from the lake in its gulf -like valley, spreading upon its 
shoulders, like wings prepared for flight, the broad 
gleaming glaciers known as Kintla and Agassiz, will 
withhold his guerdon for a moment. 




Fr.ini a piuitogriiph by llu L. S. lyi.i.'iJ.s/i j/ Sumy 

SHOWING THE AGAZZIZ GLACIER 

Kintla Peak. Glacior Xational Park. 5.000 feet above the lake, spreads (glaciers out either 

way like wings 




l-'r.int ,: l>lii)l,>^r,if>li by M . K. Campbell 

BEAUTIFUL BOWMAX LAKE, GLACIER NATIONAL PARK 

It heads close up under the Continental Divide, where is found some of the most striking 
scenery of .America 



GLACIERED PEAKS 283 

Here again we repeat, for the hundredth or more 
time in our leisurely survey of the park, what the Eng- 
lishman said of the spectacle of St. Mary: "There is 
nothing like it in the world." 



XIV 
ROCK RECORDS OF A VANISHED RACE 

Mesa Verde National Park, Southwestern Colorado. 
Area, 77 Square Miles 



MANY years, possibly centuries, before Columbus 
discovered America, a community of cliff-dwell- 
ers inhabiting a group of canyons in what is now 
southwestern Colorado entirely disappeared. 

Many generations before that, again possibly 
centuries, the founders of this community, abandoning 
the primitive pueblos of their people elsewhere, had 
sought new homes in the valleys tributary to the 
Mancos River. Perhaps they were enterprising young 
men and women dissatisfied with the poor and unpro- 
gressive life at home. Perhaps they were dissenters 
from ancient religious forms, outcasts and pilgrims, 
for there is abundant evidence that the prehistoric 
sun-worshippers of our southwest were deeply rehgious, 
and human nature is the same under skins of all colors 
in every land and age. More likely they were merely 
thrifty pioneers attracted to the green cedar-grown 
mesas by the hope of better conditions. 

Whatever the reason for their pilgrimage, it is a 
fair inference that, like our own Pilgrim Fathers, they 

were sturdy of body and progressive of spirit, for they 

284 



ROCK RECORDS OF A VANISHED RACE 285 

had a culture which their descendants carried beyond 
that of other tribes and communities of prehistoric 
people in America north of the land of the Aztecs. 

Beginning with modest stone structures of the 
usual cliff-dwellers' type built in deep clefts in the 
mesa's perpendicular cliff, safe from enemies above 
and below, these enterprising people developed in 
time a complicated architecture of a high order; they 
advanced the arts beyond the practice of their fore- 
fathers and their neighbors; they herded cattle upon 
the mesas; they raised com and melons in clearings 
in the forests, and watered their crops in the dry sea- 
sons by means of simple irrigation systems as soundly 
scientific, so far as they went, as those of to-day; out- 
growing their cliff homes, they invaded the neighbor- 
ing mesas, where they built pueblos and more am- 
bitious structures. 

Then, apparently suddenly, for they left behind 
them many of their household goods, and left unfinished 
an elaborate temple to their god, the sun, they van- 
ished. There is no clew to the reason or the manner 
of their going. 

Meantime European civilization was pushing in 
all directions. Columbus discovered America; De 
Soto explored the southeast and ascended the Missis- 
sippi; Cortez pushed into Mexico and conquered the 
Aztecs; Spanish priests carried the gospel north and 
west from the Antilles to the continent; Raleigh sent 
explorers to Virginia; the Pilgrim Fathers landed in 
Massachusetts; the white man pushed the Indian 



286 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

aside, and at last the European pioneer sought a pre- 
carious living on the sands of the southwest. 

One December day in 1888 Richard and Alfred 
Wetherill hunted lost cattle on the top of one of the 
green mesas north and west of the Mancos River. 
They knew this mesa well. Many a time before had 
they rounded up their herds and stalked the deer 
among the thin cedar and pinyon forests. Often, 
doubtless, in their explorations of the broad Mancos 
Valley below, they had happened upon ruins of primi- 
tive isolated or grouped stone buildings hidden by sage- 
brush, half buried in rock and sand. No doubt, around 
their ranch fire, they had often speculated concerning 
the manner of men that had inhabited these lowly 
structures so many years before that sometimes aged 
cedars grew upon the broken walls. 

But this December day brought the Wetherills the 
surprise of their uneventful lives. Some of the cattle 
had wandered far, and the search led to the very brink 
of a deep and narrow canyon, across which, in a long 
deep cleft under the overhang of the opposite cliff, 
they saw what appeared to be a city. Those who 
have looked upon the stirring spectacle of Cliff Palace 
from this point can imagine the astonishment of these 
ranchmen. 

Whether or not the lost cattle were ever found is 
not recorded, but we may assume that living on the 
mesa was not plentiful enough to make the WetheriUs 
forget them in the pleasure of discovering a ruin. But 
they lost no time in investigating their find, and soon 



ROCK RECORDS OF A VANISHED RACE 287 

after crossed the canyon and climbed into this prehis- 
toric city. They named it Cliff Palace, most inap- 
propriately, by the way, for it was in fact that most 
democratic of structures, a community dwelling. 
Pushing their explorations farther, presently they dis- 
covered also a smaller ruin, which they named Spruce 
Tree House, because a prominent spruce grew in front 
of it. These are the largest two cliff-dwellings in the 
Mesa Verde National Park, and, until Doctor J. Walter 
Fewkes unearthed Sun Temple in 191 5, among the most 
extraordinary prehistoric buildings north of Mexico. 

There are thousands of prehistoric ruins in our 
southwest, and many besides those of the Mesa Verde 
are examples of an aboriginal civilization. Hundreds 
of canyons tell the story of the ancient cliff-dwellers; 
and still more numerous are the remains of communal 
houses built of stone or sun-dried brick under the open 
sky. These pueblos in the open are either isolated 
structures like the lesser cliff-dwellings, or are crowded 
together till they touch walls, as in our modem cities; 
often they were several stories high, the floors connected 
by ladders. Sometimes, for protection against the 
elements, whole villages were built in caves. Pueblos 
occasionally may be seen from the car-window in New 
Mexico. The least modified of the prehistoric type 
which are occupied to-day are the eight villages of the 
Hopi near the Grand Canyon in Arizona; a suggestive 
reproduction of a model pueblo, familiar to many thou- 
sands who have visited the canyon, stands near the 
El Tovar Hotel. 



288 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

It was not therefore because of the rarity of pre- 
historic dwellings of either type that the cliff villages 
of the Mesa Verde were conserved as a national park, 
nor only because they are the best preserved of all 
North American ruins, but because they disclose a 
type of this culture in advance of all others. 

The builders and inhabitants of these dwellings 
were Indians having physical features common to all 
American tribes. That their accomplishment differed 
in degree from that of the shiftless war-making tribes 
north and east of them, and from that of the cultured 
and artistic Mayas of Central America, was doubtless 
due to differences in conditions of living. The struggle 
for bare existence in the southwest, like that of the 
habitats of other North American Indians, was in- 
tense; but these were agriculturalists and protected 
by environment. The desert was a handicap, of course, 
but it offered opportunity in many places for dry farm- 
ing; the Indian raised his corn. The winters, too, 
were short. It is only in the southwest that enterprise 
developed the architecture of stone houses which dis- 
tinguish pueblo Indians from others in North America. 

The dwellers in the Mesa Verde were more for- 
tunate even than their fellow pueblo dwellers. The 
forested mesas, so different from the arid cliffs farther 
south and west, possessed constant moisture and fer- 
tile soil. The grasses lured the deer within capture. 
The Mancos River provided fish. Above all, the re- 
moteness of these fastness canyons from the trails of 
raiders and traders and their ease of defense made 



ROCK RECORDS OF A VANISHED RACE 289 

for long generations of peace. The enterprise innate 
in the spirit of man did the rest. 

II 

The history of the Mesa Verde National Park be- 
gan with the making of America. All who have trav- 
elled in the southwest have seen mesas from the car- 
window. New Mexico, Arizona, and parts of Colorado 
and Utah, the region of the pueblos, constitute an ele- 
vated plateau largely arid. Many millions of years 
ago all was submerged in the intercontinental sea; in 
fact the region was sea many times, for it rose and fell 
alternately, accumulating thousands of feet of sands 
and gravels much of which hardened into stone after 
the slow great upUfting which made it the lofty plateau 
of to-day. Erosion did its work. For a million years 
or more the floods of spring have washed down the 
sands and gravels, and the rivers have carried them 
into the sea. Thousands of vertical feet have disap- 
peared in this way from the potential altitude of the 
region. The spring floods are still washing down the 
sands and gravels, and the canyons, cliffs, and mesas of 
the desert are disclosed to-day as stages in the eternal 
levelling. 

Thus were created the canyons and mesas of the 
Mesa Verde. Mesa, by the way, is Spanish for table, 
and verde for green. These, then, are the green table- 
lands, forest-covered and during the summer grown 
scantily with grass and richly with flowers. 



290 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

The Mesa Verde National Park was created by 
act of Congress in June, 1906, and enlarged seven 
years later. The Mancos River, on its way to the 
San Juan and thence to the Colorado and the passage 
of the Grand Canyon, forms its southern boundary. 
Scores of canyons, large and small, nearly all dry ex- 
cept at the spring floods, are tributary. All of these 
trend south; in a general way they are parallel. Each 
of the greater stems has its lesser tributaries and each 
of these its lesser forks. Between the canyons lie the 
mesas. Their tops, if continued without break, would 
form a more or less level surface; that is, all had been 
a plain before floods cut the separating canyons. 

The region has a wonderful scenic charm. It is 
markedly different in quality from other national parks, 
but in its own way is quite as startling and beautiful. 
Comparison is impossible because of the lack of ele- 
ments in common, but it may be said that the Mesa 
Verde represents our great southwest in one of its 
most fascinating phases, combining the fundamentals 
of the desert with the flavor of the near-by moun- 
tains. The canyons, which are seven or eight hundred 
feet deep and two or three times as wide where the 
cliff-dwellings gather, are prevailingly tawny yellow. 
Masses of sloping talus reach more than half-way up; 
above them the cliffs are perpendicular; it is in cavi- 
ties in these perpendiculars that the cliff-dwellings 
hide. Above the cliffs are low growths of yellowish- 
green cedar with pinyons and other conifers of darker 
foliage. Beneath the trees and covering the many 








^4 



ft ■ -/V t\ 




ROCK RECORDS OF A VANISHED RACE 291 

opens grows the familiar sage of the desert, a gray 
which hints at green and yellow both but realizes 
neither. But the sage-brush shelters desert grasses, 
and, around the occasional springs and their slender 
outlets, grass grows rank and plenteous; a little water 
counts for a great deal in the desert. 

Summer, then, is delightful on the Mesa Verde. 
The plateau is high and the air invigorating, warm by 
day in midsummer, always cool at night. The atmos- 
phere is marvellously clear, and' the sunsets are famous. 
The winter snows, which reach three or four feet in 
depth, disappear in April. From May to Thanksgiving 
the region is in its prime. It is important to realize 
that this land has much for the visitor besides its ruins. 
It has vigor, distinction, personality, and remarkable 
charm. It is the highest example of one of America's 
most distinctive and important scenic phases, and this 
without reference to its prehistoric dwellings. No 
American traveller knows his America, even the great 
southwest, who does not know the border-land where 
desert and forest mingle. 

The Southern Ute Indian Reservation bites a large 
rectangle from the southeast comer of the park, but 
its inhabitants are very different in quality of mind and 
spirit from the ancient and reverent builders of Sun 
Temple. Reservation Indians frequently enter the 
park, but they cannot be persuaded to approach the 
cliff-dwellings. The "little people," they tell you, live 
there, and neither teaching nor example will convince 
them that these invisible inhabitants will not injure 



292 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

intruders. Some of these Indians allege that it was 
their own ancestors who built the cliff-dwellings, but 
there is neither record nor tradition to support such 
a claim. The fact appears to be that the Utes were the 
ancient enemies of this people. There is a Ute tradi- 
tion of a victory over the ancient pueblo-dwellers at 
Battle Rock in McElmo Canyon. 

There are, on the other hand, many reasons for 
the opinion that the Hopi Indians of the present day, 
so far at least as culture goes, are descendants of this 
remarkable prehistoric people. Besides the many simi- 
larities between the architectural types of the Mesa 
Verde and the pueblos of the modem Hopi, careful 
investigators have found suggestive points of similarity 
in their utensils, their art forms, and their customs. 
Doctor Fewkes cites a liopi tradition to that effect by 
mentioning the visit of a Hopi courier a few years ago 
to prehistoric ruins in the Navajo National Monu- 
ment to obtain water from an ancestral spring for use 
in a Hopi religious ceremonial. If these traditions are 
founded in fact, the promising civilization of the Mesa 
Verde has sadly retrograded in its transplanting. Hopi 
architecture and masonry shows marked retrogression 
from the splendid types of the Mesa Verde. 

When the telephone-Hne was under construction 
to connect the park with the outside world, the In- 
dians from the adjoining Ute reservation became sus- 
picious and restless. Upon hearing its purpose, they 
begged the superintendent not to go on with the work, 
which was certain to bring evil to the neighborhood. 



ROCK RECORDS OF A VANISHED RACE 293 

"The little people," they solemnly declared, "will 
not like it." 

They assured the superintendent that the wires 
would not talk. 

"The little people will not let them talk," they 
told him. 

But the line was completed and the wires talked. 

The park is reached by motor and rail. From 
Denver, Salt Lake City, and Santa Fe railroad routes 
offer choice of some of the biggest country of the 
Rockies. From either direction a night is spent en 
route in a mountain mining- town, an experience which 
has its usefulness in preparation for the contrasted and 
unusual experience to come. Entrance is through 
Mancos, from which motor-stages thread the maze of 
canyons and mesas from the highlands of the northern 
border to the deep canyons of the south where cluster 
the ruins of distinction. 

This entry is deUghtful. The road crosses the 
northern boundary at the base of a lofty butte known 
as Point Lookout, the park's highest elevation. En- 
circling its eastern side and crossing the Morefield 
Canyon the road perches for several nules upon the 
sinuous crest of a ridge more than eight thousand feet 
in altitude, whose north side plunges eighteen hundred 
feet into the broad Montezuma Valley, and whose 
gentle southern slope holds the small beginnings''of the 
great canyons of the cliff-dwellers. Both north and 
south the panorama unfolds in impressive grandeur, 
eloquent of the beautiful scanty land and of the diffi- 



294 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

cult conditions of living which confronted the sturdy 
builders whose ancient masterpieces we are on our 
way to see. At the northern end of Chapin Mesa we 
swing sharply south and follow its slope, presently 
entering the warm, glowing, scented forests, through 
which we speed to the hotel-camp perched upon a blufif 
overlooking the depths of Spruce Canyon. 

Upon the top and under the eaves of this mesa 
are found very fine types of prehistoric civilization. 
At Mummy Lake, half-way down the mesa, we passed 
on the way a good example of pueblo architecture, and 
within an easy walk of our terminal camp we find some 
of the noblest examples of cliff- dwellings in existence. 
Here it was, near the head of this remote, nearly inac- 
cessible, canyon, guarded by nature's ramparts, that 
aboriginal American genius before the coming of the 
Anglo-Saxon found its culminating expression. 

In this spirit the thoughtful American of to-day 
enters the Mesa Verde National Park and examines 
its precious memorials. 

Ill 

Although the accident of the road brings the trav- 
eller first to the mesa-top pueblos of the Mummy Lake 
district, historical sequence suggests that examination 
begin with the cM-dwellings. 

Of the many examples of these remains in the 
park. Cliff Palace, Spruce Tree House, and Balcony 
House are the most important because they concisely 
and completely cover the range of life and the fulness 



ROCK RECORDS OF A VANISHED RACE 295 

of development. This is not the place for detailed 
descriptions of these ruins. The special pubhcations 
of the National Park Service and particularly the writ- 
ings of Doctor J. Walter Fewkes of the Smithsonian 
Institution, who has devoted many years of brilHant 
investigation to American prehistoric remains, are 
obtainable from government sources. Here we shall 
briefly consider several types. 

It is impossible, without reference to photographs, 
to convey a concise adequate idea of Cliff Palace. 
Seen from across its canyon the splendid crescent- 
shaped ruin offers to the unaccustomed eye little that 
is common to modern architecture. Prominently in 
the foreground, large circular wells at once challenge 
interest. These were the kivas, or ceremonial rooms of 
the community, centres of the religious activities which 
counted so importantly in pueblo life. Here it was 
that men gathered monthly to worship their gods. In 
the floors of some kivas are small holes representing 
symbohcally the entrance to the underworld, and 
around these from time to time priests doubtless per- 
formed archaic ceremonies and communicated with 
the dead. Each family or clan in the community is 
supposed to have had its own kiva. 

The kiva walls of Cliff Palace show some of the 
finest prehistoric masonry in America. AH are sub- 
terranean, which in a few instances necessitated ex- 
cavation in floors of solid rock. The roofs were sup- 
ported by pedestals rising from mural banquettes, 
usually six pedestals to a kiva; the kiva supposed to 



296 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

have belonged to the chief's clan had eight pedestals, 
and one, perhaps belonging to a clan of lesser promi- 
nence, had only two. Several kivas which lack roof- 
supports may have been of different type or used for 
lesser ceremonials. All except these have fireplaces and 
ventilators. Entrance was by ladder from the roof. 

Other rooms identified are living-rooms, storage- 
rooms, milling-rooms, and round and square towers, 
besides which there are dark rooms of unknown use 
and several round rooms which are neither kivas nor 
towers. Several of the living-rooms have raised 
benches evidently used for beds, and in one of them 
pegs for holding clothing still remain in the walls. 
The rooms are smoothly plastered or painted. 

Mills for grinding com were found in one room in 
rows; in others, singly. The work was done by 
women, who rubbed the upper stone against the lower 
by hand. The rests for their feet while at work still 
remain in place; also the brushes for sweeping up the 
meal. The small storage-rooms had stone doors, care- 
fully sealed with clay to keep out mice and prevent 
moisture from spoiling the corn and meal. 

One of the most striking buildings in Cliff Palace is 
the Round Tower, two stories high, which not only 
was an observatory, as is indicated by its peep-holes, 
but also served purposes in religious festivals. Its 
masonry belongs to the finest north of Mexico. The 
stones are beautifully fitted and dressed. The Square 
Tower which stands at the southern end of the village 
is four stories high, reaching the roof of the cave. The 



ROCK RECORDS OF A VANISHED RACE 297 

inner walls of its third story are elaborately painted 
with red and white symbols, triangles, zigzags, and 
parallels, the significance of which is not known. 

The ledge under which Cliff Palace is built forms 
a roof that overhangs the structure. An entrance, 
probably the principal one, came from below to a court 
at a lower level than the floor, from which access was 
by ladder. 

Spruce Tree House, which may have been built 
after Cliff Palace, has a circular room with windows 
which were originally supposed to have been port- 
holes for defense. Doctor Fewkes, however, suggests 
a more probable purpose, as the position of the room 
does not specially suggest a fortress. Through the 
openings in this room the sun-priest may have watched 
the setting sun to determine the time for ceremonies. 
The room was entered from above, like a kiva. An- 
other room, differing from any in other cliff-dweUings, 
has been named the Warriors' Room because, unlike 
sleeping-rooms, its bench surrounds three sides, and 
because, unlike any other room, it is built above a 
kiva. Only the exigencies of defense, it is supposed, 
would warrant so marked a departure from the pre- 
scribed religious form of room. 

Balcony House has special interest, apart from its 
commanding location, perfection of workmanship and 
unusual beauty, and because of the ingenuity of the 
defenses of its only possible entrance. At the top of a 
steep trail a cave-Hke passage between rocks is walled 
so as to leave a door capable of admitting only one at 



298 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

a time, behind which two or three men could strike 
down, one by one, an attacking army. 

Out of these simple architectural elements, to- 
gether with the utensils and weapons found in the ruins, 
the imagination readily constructs a picture of the aus- 
tere, laborious, highly religious, and doubtless happy 
lives led by the earnest people who built these ancient 
dwellings in the caves. 

When all the neighborhood caves were filled to 
overflowing with increasing population, and generations 
of peace had wrought a confidence which had not ex- 
isted when the pioneers had sought safety in caves, 
these people ventured to move out of chffs and to build 
upon the tops of the mesa. Whether all the cave- 
dwellers were descended from the original pilgrims or 
whether others had joined them afterward is not 
known, but it seems evident that the separate commu- 
nities had found some common bond, probably tribal, 
and perhaps evolved some common government. No 
doubt they intermarried. No doubt the blood of many 
cliff-dwelling communities mingled in the new commu- 
nities which built pueblos upon the mesa. In time 
there were many of these pueblos, and they were widely 
scattered; there are mounds at intervals all over the 
Mesa Verde. The largest group of pueblos, one infers 
from the number of visible mounds, was built upon the 
Chapin Mesa several miles north of the above-men- 
tioned cliff-dwelling near a reservoir known to-day as 
Mummy Lake. It is there, then, that we shall now 
go in continuation of our story. 




rREHISroRlC POTTER^' KROM MESA \ ERDE 
Coloring and design as well as form show high artistic sense and clean workmanship 



ROCK RECORDS OF A VANISHED RACE 299 

Mummy Lake is not a lake and no mummies 
were ever found there. This old-time designation 
applies to an artificial depression surrounded by a 
low rude stone wall, much crumbled, which was evi- 
dently a storage reservoir for an irrigation system of 
some size. A number of conspicuous mounds in the 
neighborhood suggest the former existence of a village 
of pueblos dependent upon the farms for which the 
irrigation system had been built. One of these, from 
which a few stones protruded, was excavated in 1916 
by Doctor Fewkes, and has added a new and important 
chapter to the history of this people. This pueblo has 
been named Far View House. Its extensive vista in- 
cludes four other groups of similar mounds. Each 
cluster occurs in the fertile sage-brush clearings which 
bloom in summer with asters and Indian paint-brush; 
there is no doubt that good crops of Indian corn could 
still be raised from these sands to-day by dry-farming 
methods. 

Far View House is a pueblo, a hundred and thir- 
teen feet long by more than fifty feet wide, not includ- 
ing a full-length plaza about thirty-five feet wide in 
which religious dances are supposed to have taken 
place. The differences between this fine structure and 
the cM-cities are considerable. The most significant 
evidence of progress, perhaps, is the modern regularity 
of the ground-plan. The partitions separating the 
secular rooms are continuous through the building, and 
the angles are generally accurately right angles. 

The pueblo had three stories. It is oriented ap- 



300 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

proximately to the cardinal points and was terraced 
southward to secure a sunny exposure. The study of 
the solar movements became an advanced science with 
these people in the latter stages of their development. 
It must be remembered that they had no compasses; 
knowing nothing of the north or any other fixed point, 
nevertheless there is evidence that they successfully 
worked out the solstices and planned their later build- 
ings accurately according to cardinal points of their 
own calculation. 

Another difference indicating development is the 
decrease in the number of kivas, and the construction 
of a single very large kiva in the middle of the build- 
ing. Its size suggests at once that the individual clan 
organization of cHff -dwelling days had here given place 
to a single priestly fraternity, sociologically a marked 
advance. Drawing parallels with the better-known 
customs of other primitive people, we are at liberty, 
if we please, to infer similar progress in other direc- 
tions. The original primitive communism was devel- 
oping naturally, though doubtless very slowly, into 
something akin to organized society, probably involv- 
ing more compHcated economic relationships in all 
departments of Hving. 

While their masonry did not apparently improve 
in proportion, Far View House shows increase in the 
nimaber and variety of the decorative figures incised 
on hewn stones. The spiral, representing the coiled 
serpent, appears a number of times, as do many com- 
binations of squares, curves, and angles arranged in 



ROCK RECORDS OF A VANISHED RACE 301 

fanciful design, which may or may not have had sym- 
bolic meanings. 

A careful examination of the neighborhood dis- 
closes few details of the irrigation system, but it shows 
a cemetery near the southeast comer of the building in 
which the dead were systematically buried. 

Large numbers of minor antiquities were found in 
this interesting structure. Besides the usual stone 
implements of the mason and the housekeeper, many 
instruments of bone, such as needles, dirks, and bod- 
kins, were found. Figurines of several kinds were un- 
earthed, carved from soft stone, including several in- 
tended to symbolize Indian corn; all these may have 
been idols. Fragments of pottery were abundant, in 
full variety of form, decoration, and color, but always 
the most ancient types. Among the bones of animals, 
the frequency of those of rabbits, deer, antelope, elk, 
and mountain-sheep indicate that meat formed no in- 
considerable part of the diet. Fabrics and embroi- 
deries were not discovered, as in the cliff -dwellings, but 
they may have disappeared in the centuries through 
exposure to the elements. 

Far View House may not show the highest devel- 
opment of the Mummy Lake cluster of pueblos, and 
further exhumations here and in neighboring groups 
may throw further light upon this interesting people 
in their gropings from darkness to light. Meantime, 
however, returning to the neighborhood of the cUff- 
dwellings, let us examine a structure so late in the 
history of these people that they left it unfinished. 



302 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

Sun Temple stands on a point of Chapin Mesa, 
somewhat back from the edge of Cliff Canyon, com- 
manding an extraordinary range of country. It is 
within full view of Cliff Palace and other cliff-dwellings 
of importance and easy of access. From it, one can 
look southward to the Mancos River. On every side 
a wide range of mesa and canyon hes in full view. The 
site is unrivalled for a temple in which all could 
worship with devotion. 

When Doctor Fewkes, in the early summer of 191 5, 
attacked the mound which had been designated Com- 
munity House under the supposition that it covered 
a ruined pueblo, he had no idea of the extraordinary 
nature of the find awaiting him, although he was pre- 
pared from its shape and other indications for some- 
thing out of the usual. So wholly without parallel was 
the disclosure, however, that it was not till it was en- 
tirely imcovered that he ventured a public conjecture 
as to its significance. The ground-plan of Sun Temple 
is shaped Hke the letter D. It encloses another D- 
shaped structure occupying nearly two-thirds of its 
total area, within which are two large kivas. Between 
the outer and the inner D are passages and rooms, and 
at one end a third kiva is surrounded by rooms, one of 
which is circular. 

Sun Temple is also impressive in size. It is a 
hundred and twenty-one feet long and sixty-four feet 
wide. Its walls average four feet in thickness, and are 
double-faced, enclosing a central core of rubble; they 
are built of the neighborhood sandstone. The masonry 




From a photograph by George L. Beam 

SUN TEMPLE, MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK 
Built by prehistoric people to their god, the sun, and unfinished when they suddenly disappeared 




i>no:,,^i,ipi: liy George L. Beam 

SPRUCE TREE HOUSE FROM ACROSS THE CANYON 
Showing the overhanging rock roof and the forest which tops the Mesa Verde 



ROCK RECORDS OF A VANISHED RACE 303 

is of fine quality. This, together with its symmetrical 
architectural design, its fine proportions, and its many 
decorated stones, mark it the highest type of Mesa 
Verde architecture. 

It was plainly unfinished. Walls had risen in 
some places higher than in others. As yet there was 
no roofing. No rooms had been plastered. Of in- 
ternal finishing little was completed, and of contents, 
of course, there was none. The stone hammers and 
other utensils of the builders were found lying about 
as if thrown down at day's close. 

The kivas, although circular, are unlike those of 
Cliff Palace, inasmuch as they are above ground, not 
subterranean. The mortar used in pointing shows the 
impress of human hands; no trowels were used. The 
walls exhibit many stones incised with complicated 
designs, largely geometric; some may be mason's 
marks; others are decorative or symbolic. These de- 
signs indicate a marked advance over those in Far 
View House; in fact they are far more complicated 
and artistic than any in the southwest. 

Bare and ineloquent though its unfinished condi- 
tion left it, the rehgious purposes of the entire build- 
ing are clear to the archaeologist in its form. And, as 
if to make conjecture certainty, a shrine was uncovered 
on the corner-stone of the outer wall which frames in 
solid stone walls a large fossil palm-leaf whose rays 
strongly suggest the sun ! 

It requires no imagination to picture the effect 
which the original discovery of this image of their god 



304 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

must have had upon a primitive community of sun- 
worshippers. It must have seemed to them a divine 
gift, a promise, Hke the Ark of the Covenant, of the 
favor of the Almighty. It may even have first sug- 
gested the idea of building this temple to their deity. 

This is all the story. Go there and study it in 
detail. Enlightened, profoundly impressed, neverthe- 
less you will finish at this point. The tale has no 
climax. It just stops. 

What happened to the people of the Mesa Verde ? 

Some archaeologists believe that they emigrated 
to neighboring valleys southwest. But why should 
they have left their prosperous farms and fine homes 
for regions which seem to us less desirable ? And why, 
a profoundly religious people, should they have left 
Sun Temple unfinished? 

What other supposition remains? 

Only, I think, that, perhaps because of their pros- 
perity and the unpreparedness that accompanies long 
periods of peace, they were suddenly overwhelmed by 
enemies. 



XV 
THE HEALING WATERS 

Hot Springs Reservation, Arkansas. Platt National 
Park, Oklahoma 

I 

FROM a hillside on the edge of the Ozark Moun- 
tains in central Arkansas issue springs of hot 
water which are effective in the alleviation of rheu- 
matic and kindred iUs. Although chemical analysis 
fails to explain the reason, the practice of many years 
has abundantly proved their worth. Before the com- 
ing of the white man they were known to the Indians, 
who are said to have proclaimed them neutral terri- 
tory in time of war. Perhaps it was rumor of their 
fame upon which Ponce de Leon founded his dream of 
a Fountain of Youth. 

In the early years of the last century hundreds of 
settlers toiled many miles over forest trails to camp 
beside them and bathe daily in their waters. The 
bent and suffering were carried there on stretchers. 
So many and so striking were the cures that the fame 
of these springs spread throughout the young nation, 
and in 1832, to prevent their falling into hands out- 
stretched to seize and exploit them for private gain, 
Congress created them a national reservation. The 
Hot Springs Reservation was our first national park. 

305 



3o6 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

Previous to this a couple of log houses built by 
visitors served for shelter for the pilgrims at the shrine 
of health. Soon after, other buildings quite as primi- 
tive were erected. A road was constructed through 
the forests from the settled portions of the State, and 
many drove laboriously in with tents and camping 
outfits. I have seen a copy of a photograph which 
was taken when photographs were new, showing several 
men and women in the odd conventional costume of 
that period sitting solemnly upon the banks of a 
steaming spring, their clothes drawn up, their bare 
legs caK deep in the hot water. 

Once started, Hot Springs grew rapidly. Unfor- 
tunately, this first act of national conservation failed 
to foresee the great future of these springs, and the 
reservation line was drawn so that it barely enclosed 
the brook of steaming vapors which was their outlet. 
To-day, when the nation contemplates spending mil- 
lions to beautify the national spa, it finds the city 
built solidly opposite. 

Railroads soon pushed their way through the 
Ozark foot-hills and landed thousands yearly beside 
the healing waters. Hotels became larger and more 
numerous. The government built a public bath- 
house into which the waters were piped for the free 
treatment of the people. Concessioners built more 
elaborate structures within the reservation to accom- 
modate those who preferred to pay for pleasanter 
surroundings or for private treatment. The village 
became a town and the town a city. Boarding- 



THE HEALING WATERS 307 

houses sprang up everywhere with accommodations to 
suit the needs of purses of all lengths. Finally, large 
and costly hotels were built for the prosperous and 
fashionable who began to find rare enjoyment in the 
beautiful Ozark country while they drank their hot 
water and took their invigorating baths. Hot Springs 
became a national resort. 

It will be seen that, in its way. Hot Springs has 
reflected the social development of the country. It has 
passed through the various stages that marked the 
national growth in taste and morals. During the 
period when gambling was a national vice it was noted 
for its high play, and then gamblers of all social grades 
looked forward to their season in the South. During 
the period of national dissipation, when poKte drunk- 
enness was a badge of class and New Year's day an 
orgy, it became the periodic resort of inebriates, just 
as later, with the elevation of the national moral sense, 
it became instead the most conser\^ative of resorts, 
the periodic refuge of thousands of work-worn business 
and professional men seeking the astonishing recupera- 
tive power of its water. 

True again to the spirit of the times. Hot Springs 
reflects to the full the spirit of to-day. It is a Southern 
mountain resort of quiet charm and wonderful natural 
beauty set on the edge of a broad region of hills, ra- 
vines, and sweet-smelling pines, a paradise for the 
walker, the hiker, and the horseback rider. Down on 
the street a long row of handsome modem bath-houses, 
equipped with all the scientific luxuries, and more be- 



3o8 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

sides, of the most elaborate European spa, concen- 
trates the business of bath and cure. Back of this rise 
directly the beautiful Ozark hills. One may have 
exactly what he wishes at Hot Springs. He may live 
with the sick if that is his bent, or he may spend weeks 
of rich enjoyment of the South in holiday mood, and 
have his baths besides, without a suggestion of the 
sanitarium or even of the spa. 

Meantime the mystery of the water's potency 
seems to have been solved. It is not chemical in 
solution which clears the system of its ills and restores 
the jaded tissues to buoyancy, but the newly discov- 
ered principle of radioactivity. Somewhere deep in 
Nature's laboratory these waters become charged with 
an uplifting power which is imparted to those who 
bathe according to the rules which many years of ex- 
perience have prescribed. Many physicians refuse to 
verify the waters' virtues; some openly scoff. But 
the fact stands that every year hundreds who come 
helpless cripples walk jauntily to the station on their 
departure, and many thousands of sufferers from rheu- 
matic ills and the wear and tear of strenuous living 
return to their homes restored. I myself can testify 
to the surprising recuperative effect of only half a 
dozen daily baths, and I know business men who 
habitually go there whenever the stress of overwork 
demands measures of quick relief. 

It is not surprising that more than a hundred 
thousand persons visit Hot Springs every year. The 
recognized season begins after the winter holidays; 




0.\ llul M'Rl.NGS MUUXTAl.N, HUT SPRINGS Ul- ARKANSAS 




HAIH HOUSE ROW. HOT SPRINGS OF ARKW \ 



THE HEALING WATERS 309 

then it is that gayety and pleasuring, riding, driving, 
motoring, golfing, and the social life of the fashionable 
hotels reach their height. But, for sheer enjoyment of 
the quieter kind, the spring, early summer, and the 
autumn are unsurpassed; south though it lies, Hot 
Springs is delightful even in midsummer. 

Two railroads land the visitor almost at the en- 
trance of the reservation. A fine road brings the 
motorist sixty miles from the Hvely city of Little Rock. 
The elaborate bath-houses line the reservation side of 
the principal street, opposite the brick city. But back 
of them rises abruptly the beautiful forested mountain 
from whose side gush the healing waters, and back of 
this roll the beautiful pine-grown Ozarks. The divi- 
sion is sharply drawn. He who chooses may forget 
the city except at the hour of his daily bath. 

The plans for realizing in stone and landscape 
gardening the ideal of the great American spa, which 
this spot is in fact, contemplate the work of years. 

II 

In southern Oklahoma not far from the Texas 
boundary, a group of thirty healing springs, these of 
cold sparkling water, were set apart by Congress in 
1904 under the title of the Piatt National Park. Most 
of them are sulphur springs; others are impregnated 
with bromides and other mineral salts. Many thou- 
sands visit yearly the prosperous bordering city of 
Sulphur to drink these waters; many camp in or near 



3IO THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

the reservation; the bottled waters bring relief to 
thousands at home. 

Through the national park, from its source in the 
east to its entry into Rock Creek, winds Travertine 
Creek, the outlet of most of these springs. Rock Creek 
outlines the park's western boundary, and on its farther 
bank lies the city. Springs of importance within the 
park pour their waters directly into its current. All 
these Piatt springs, like those of Hot Springs, Arkansas, 
were known to the Indians for their curative properties 
for many generations before the coming of the white 
settler. 

The park is the centre of a region of novelty and 
charm for the visitor from the North and East. The 
intimate commimion of prairie and rich forested valley, 
the sophistication of the bustling little city in contrast 
with the rough life of the outlying ranches, the mingling 
in common intercourse of such differing human ele- 
ments as the Eastern tourist, the free and easy Western 
townsman, the cowboy and the Indian, give rare spice 
to a visit long enough to impart the spirit of a country 
of so many kinds of appeal. The cHmate, too, contrib- 
utes to enjoyment. The long spring lasts from Feb- 
ruary to June. During the short summer, social life 
is at its height. The fall lingers to the holidays before 
it gives way to a short winter, which the Arbuckle 
Mountains soften by diverting the colder winds. 

The pleasures are those of prairie and valley. It 
is a great land for riding. There is swimming, rowing, 
and excellent black-bass fishing in the larger lakes. 



THE HEALING WATERS 311 

It is a region of deer and many birds. ■ Its altitude is 
about a thousand feet. 

The roUing Oklahoma plateau attains in this 
neighborhood its pleasantest outline and variety. 
Broad plains of grazing-land alternate with bare rocky 
heights and low mountains. The creeks and rivers 
which accumulate the waters of the springs scattered 
widely among these prairie hills are outlined by wind- 
ing forested belts and flowered thickets of brush. 
Great areas of thin prairie yield here and there to 
rounded hills, some of which bear upon their summits 
columns of flat rocks heaped one upon the other high 
enough to be seen for miles against the low horizon. 

These, which are known as the Chimney Hills, for 
many years have been a cause of speculation among 
the settlers who have nearly replaced the Indians since 
the State of Oklahoma replaced the Indian Territory 
with which we became familiar in the geographies of 
earlier days. Who were the builders of these chimneys 
and what was their purpose ? 

"At a hearing in Ardmore a few years ago before 
a United States court taking testimony upon some 
ancient Indian depredation claims," writes Colonel 
R. A. Sneed, for years the superintendent of the Piatt 
National Park, ''practically all the residents of the 
Chickasaw Nation, Indian and negro, whose memories 
of that country extend back fifty years or more, were 
in attendance. In recounting his recollections of a 
Comanche raid in which his master's horses were 
stolen, one old negro incidentally gave a solution of 



312 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

the Chimney Hills which is the only one the writer 
ever heard, and which probably accounts for all of 
them. 

"He said that his master lived at Big Sulphur 
Springs, farthest west of any of the Chickasaws; that 
the Kiowas and Comanches raided the country every 
summer and drove out horses or cattle wherever they 
could find them unprotected; that he had often gone 
with his master to find these stolen cattle; that these 
forages were so frequent that the Chickasaws had never 
undertaken to occupy any of their lands west of Rock 
Creek, north of Big Sulphur Springs, nor west of the 
Washita River south of the springs; that the country 
west of Sulphur Springs was dry, and water was hard 
to find imless one knew just where to look; and that 
the Comanches had a custom of marking all the springs 
they could find by building rock chimneys on the hills 
nearest to the springs. Only one chimney would be 
built if the spring flowed from beneath the same hill, 
but if the spring was distant from the hill two chimneys 
would be built, either upon the same hill or upon two 
distant hiUs, and a sight along the two chimneys would 
indicate a course toward the spring. 

"The old man said that every hiU in their pasture 
had a Comanche chimney on it and that his master 
would not disturb them because he did not want to 
make the wild Indians mad. There never was open 
war between the Chickasaws and the Comanches, but 
individual Chickasaws often had trouble with Co- 
manche hunting-parties. 



THE HEALING WATERS 313 

"The Big Sulphur Springs on Rock Creek in the 
Chickasaw Nation afterward became the centre around 
which the city of Sulphur was built, and after the town 
was grown to a population of two thousand or more 
it was removed bodily to make room for the Piatt 
National Park, around which has been built the new 
city of Sulphur, which now has a population of forty- 
five hundred. 

"Many of the Comanche monuments are extant 
and the great bluff above the Bromide Springs of the 
national park looks out toward the north and west 
over a prairie that extends to the Rocky Mountains; 
the monument that stood on the brow of that bluff 
must have been visible for many miles to the keen 
vision of the Comanche who knew how to look 
for it." 

The Indian Territory became the State of Okla- 
homa in 1907; the story of the white man's peaceful 
invasion is one of absorbing interest; the human 
spectacle of to-day is complex, even kaleidoscopic. 
In the thirties and forties the government had estab- 
lished in the territory the five civilized Indian nations, 
the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and 
Seminoles, each with its allotted boundaries, its native 
government, its legislatures, and its courts. In many 
respects these were foreign nations within our bound- 
aries. Besides them, the Osage Indians had their 
reservation in the north, and fragments of no less than 
seventeen other tribes lived on assigned territory. 

Gradually white men invaded the land, purchased 



314 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

holdings from the Indian nations, built cities, estab- 
lished businesses of many kinds, ran railroads in all 
directions. In time, the nations were abolished and 
their remaining lands were divided up among the 
individuals composing them; the Indians of these 
nations became American citizens; their negro slaves, 
for they had been large slaveholders, received each 
his portion of the divided land. Then came Okla- 
homa. 

To-day there is only one Indian reservation in 
the State, that of the Osages. OU has been found on 
their land and they are the wealthiest people in the 
world to-day, the average cash income of each exceed- 
ing five thousand dollars a year. In a state with a 
total population of two and a quarter millions live 
336,000 Indians representing twenty- three tribes and 
110,000 negroes descended from slaves. There has 
been much intermarrying between Indians and whites, 
and some between Indians and blacks. Here is a 
mixture of races to baffle the keenest eye. 

Elsewhere than in the Osage Reservation, wealth 
also has come to the Indians. Many have very large 
incomes, large even for the rich of our Eastern cities. 
Asphalt also has enriched many. Cotton is raised 
extensively in the southern counties. Grazing on a 
large scale has proved profitable. Many Indians own 
costly and luxurious homes, ride in automobiles, and 
enter importantly into business, politics, and the pro- 
fessions; these usually have more or less white blood. 
Many full-bloods who have grown rich without effort 



THE HEALING WATERS 315 

possess finely furnished bedrooms, and sleep on the 
floor in blankets; elaborate dining-rooms with costly 
table equipments, and eat cross-legged on the kitchen 
floor; gas-ranges, and cook over chip fires out-of- 
doors; automobiles, and ride blanketed ponies. Many 
wealthy men are deeply in debt because of useless 
luxuries which they have been persuaded to buy. 

Piatt National Park lies about the centre of what 
was once the Chickasaw nation. It is a grazing and 
a cotton country. There are thousands of Indians, 
many of them substantial citizens, some men of local 
influence. Native dress is seldom seen. 

Quoting again from my correspondence with Col- 
onel Sneed, here is the legend of the last of the Dela- 
wares : 

"Along about 1840, a very few years after the 
Chickasaws and Choctaws had arrived in Indian Ter- 
ritory, a small band of about sixty Delaware Indians 
arrived in the Territory, having roved from Alabama 
through Mississippi and Missouri, and through the 
northwest portion of Arkansas. Being a smaU band, 
they decided to link their fortunes with those of some 
other tribe of Indians, and they first pitched their te- 
pees with those of the Cherokees. But the Cherokee 
Chief and old Chief Wahpanucka of the Delawares 
did not agree. So the Uttle band of Delawares con- 
tinued rambling until they reached the Choctaw Nation, 
where they again tried to make terms with the Chief 
of the tribe. Evidently no agreement was reached 
between that Chief and Wahpanucka, for the Delawares 



3i6 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

continued their roving until they reached the Chicka- 
saw Nation, where they remained. 

"Old Chief Wahpanucka had a beautiful daughter 
whose name was Deerface; two of the Delaware braves 
were much in love with her, but Deerface could not 
decide which one of these warriors she should take to 
become Chief after the death of Wahpanucka. 

"Chief Wahpanucka called the two warriors be- 
fore him and a powwow was agreed upon. The coun- 
cil was held around the Council Rocks (which is now 
a point of interest within the Piatt National Park), 
and a decision was reached to the effect that at a cer- 
tain designated time the Delawares should all assemble 
on the top of the Bromide Cliff, at the foot of which 
flow the now famous Bromide and Medicine Springs, 
and that the two braves should ride their Indian ponies 
to the edge of the cliff, which was at that time known 
as Medicine Bluff, and jump off to the bed of the creek 
about two hundred feet below. The one who survived 
was to marry Deerface, and succeed Wahpanucka as 
Chief of the Delawares. 

"The race was run and both Indian braves made 
the jump from the bluff, but both were killed. When 
Deerface saw this she threw herself from the bluff 
and died at the foot of the cliff where her lovers had 
met their death. To-day her image may be seen in- 
delibly fixed on one of the rocks of the cliff where she 
fell, and the water of the Medicine Spring is sup- 
posed to be the briny tears of the old Chief when he 
saw the havoc his decision had wrought. These tears, 



THE HEALING WATERS 31? 

filtering down through the cliff where the old Chief 
stood, are credited with being so purified that the water 
of the spring which they form is possessed with remedial 
qualities which make it a cure for all human aihnents." 



THE GRAND CANYON AND OUR 
NATIONAL MONUMENTS 



ON THE SCENERY OF THE SOUTHWEST 

TO most Americans the southwest means the des- 
ert, and it is true that most of Arizona, New- 
Mexico, and Utah, and portions of Colorado and south- 
ern CaHfornia, are arid or semiarid lands, relieved, how- 
ever, by regions of fertility and agricultural pros- 
perity. In popular conception the desert has been 
the negative of all that means beauty, richness, and 
sublimity; it has been the synonym of poverty and 
death. Gradually but surely the American public is 
learning that again popular conception is wrong, that 
the desert is as positive a factor in scenery as the 
mountain, that it has its own glowing beauty, its own 
intense personahty, and occasionally, in its own amaz- 
ing way, a subhmity as gorgeous, as compelling, and 
as emotion-provoking as the most stupendous snow- 
capped range. 

The American desert region includes some of the 
world's greatest scenery. The Grand Canyon of the 
Colorado River is sunk in a plateau which, while 
sprinkled with scant pine, is nearly rainless. Zion 
Canyon is a palette of brilliant color lying among golden 
sands. A score of national monuments conserve large 
natural bridges, forests of petrified trees, interesting 
volcanic or other phenomena of prehistoric times, 
areas of strange cactus growths, deposits of the bones 

of monstrous reptiles, and remains of a civilization 

321 



322 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

which preceded the discovery of America; and, in 
addition to these, innumerable places of remarkable 
magnificence as yet unknown except to the geologist, 
the topographer, the miner, the Indian, and the ad- 
venturer in unfrequented lands. 

This arid country consists of rolling sandy plains 
as broad as seas, dotted with gray sage-brush and re- 
lieved by bare craggy monadnocks and naked ranges 
which the rising and the setting sun paints unbelievable 
colors. Here and there thin growths of cottonwood 
outline thin ribbons of rivers, few and far between. 
Here and there alkali whitens the edges of stained 
hollows where water lies awhile after spring cloud- 
bursts. Here and there are salt ponds with no outlet. 
Yet even in the desolation of its tawny monoto- 
ny it has a fascination which is insistent and cumu- 
lative. 

But the southwest is not all desert. There are 
great areas of thin grazing ranges and lands where dry 
farming yields fair crops. There are valleys which 
produce fruits and grains in abundance. There are 
hamlets and villages and cities which are among the 
oldest in America, centres of fertile tracts surrounded 
by deserts which need only water to become the rich- 
est lands on the continent. There are regions reclaimed 
by irrigation where farming has brought prosperity. 
In other places the plateau covers itself for hundreds 
of square miles with scrubby pine and cedar. 

All in all, it is a land of rare charm and infinite 
variety. 



ON THE SCENERY OF THE SOUTHWEST 323 

To appreciate a region which more and more will 
enter into American consciousness and divide travel 
with the mountains, the reader should know something 
of its structural history. 

The southwestern part of the United States rose 
above sea-level and sank below it many times during 
the many thousands of centuries preceding its present 
state, which is that of a sandy and generally desert 
plateau, five to ten thousand feet in altitude. How 
many times it repeated the cycle is not fully known. 
Some portions of it doubtless were submerged oftener 
than others. Some were lifting while others were low- 
ering. And, meantime, mountains rose and were car- 
ried away by erosion to give place to other mountains 
which also wore away; river systems formed and dis- 
appeared, lakes and inland seas existed and ceased to 
exist. The history of our southwest would have been 
tempestuous indeed had it been compassed within say 
the life of one man; but, spread over a period of time 
inconceivable to man, there may have been no time 
when it might have seemed to be more active in change 
than its still hot deserts seem to-day to the traveller 
in passing trains. 

Other parts of the continent, no doubt, have un- 
dergone as many changes; our southwest is not singu- 
lar in that. But nowhere else, perhaps, has the change 
left evidences so plain and so interesting to the imsci- 
entific observer. The page of earth's history is more 
easily read upon the bare deserts of our southwest than 
on the grass-concealed prairies of the Mississippi 



324 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

Valley or the eroded and forested ranges of the Ap- 
palachians. 

Before the Rockies and the Sierra even existed, in 
the shallow sea which covered this part of the con- 
tinent were deposited the ooze which later, when this 
region rose above the sea, became the magnificent 
limestones of the Grand Canyon. Muds accumulated 
which to-day are seen in many highly colored shales. 
Long ages of erosion from outlying mountain regions 
spread it thick with gravels and sands which now ap- 
pear in rocky walls of deep canyons. A vast plain 
was built up and graded by these deposits. The trunks 
of trees washed down by the floods from far distant 
uplands were buried in these muds and sands, where, 
in the course of unnumbered centuries, they turned to 
stone. They are the petrified forests of to-day. 

Moimtains, predecessors of our modem Sierra, 
lifted in the south and west, squeezed the moisture 
from the Pacific winds, and turned the region into 
desert. This was in the Jurassic Period. Sands thou- 
sands of feet deep were accumulated by the desert 
winds which are to-day the sandstones of the giant 
walls of Zion Canyon. 

But this was not the last desert, for again the 
region sank below the sea. Again for half a million 
years or more ooze settled upon the sands to turn to 
limestone millions of years later. In this Jurassic sea 
sported enormous marine monsters whose bones set- 
tled to the bottom to be unearthed in our times, and 
great flying reptiles crossed its water. 



ON THE SCENERY OF THE SOUTHWEST 325 

Again the region approached sea-level and accu- 
mulated, above its new limestones, other beds of sands. 
New river systems formed and brought other accumu- 
lations from distant highlands. It was then a low 
swampy plain of enormous size, whose northern limits 
reached Montana, and which touched what now is 
Kansas on its east. Upon the borders of its swamps, 
in Cretaceous times, lived gigantic reptiles, the Di- 
nosaurs and their ungainly companions whose bones 
are found to-day in several places. 

For the last time the region sank and a shallow 
sea swept from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean. 
Again new limestones formed, and as the surface very 
slowly rose for the last time at the close of the Cre- 
taceous Period many new deposits were added to the 
scenic exhibit of to-day. 

Meantime other startling changes were making 
which extended over a lapse of time which human 
mind cannot grasp. Responding to increasing pres- 
sures from below, the continent was folding from north 
to south. The miracle of the making of the Rockies 
was enacting. 

During all of Tertiary times earth movements of 
tremendous energy rocked and folded the crust and 
hastened change. The modern Sierra rose upon the 
eroded ruins of its predecessor, again shutting off the 
moisture-laden western winds and turning the south- 
west again into a desert. One of the mountain- 
building impulses spread eastward from the Sierra to 
the Wasatch Mountains, but Nature's project for this 



326 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

vast granite-cored table-land never was realized, for 
continually its central sections caved and fell. And 
so it happened that the eastern edge of the Sierra and 
the western edge of the Wasatch Mountains became 
the precipitous edges, thousands of feet high, of a 
mountain-studded desert which to-day is called the 
Great Basin. It includes southeastern Oregon, nearly 
all of Nevada, the western half of Utah, and a large 
area in the south of California, besides parts of Idaho 
and Wyoming. It is 880 miles north and south and 
572 miles wide. Its elevation is five thousand feet, 
more or less, and its area more than two hundred 
thousand square miles. 

This enormous bowl contained no outlet to the sea, 
and the rivers which flowed into it from all its moun- 
tainous borders created a prehistoric lake with an 
area of fifty-four thousand square miles which was 
named Lake Bonneville after the army ofiicer whose 
adventures in 1833 were narrated by Washington 
Irving; but it was Fremont who first clearly described 
it. Lake Bonneville has evaporated and disappeared, 
but in its place are many salty lakes, the greatest of 
which is Great Salt Lake in Utah. Attenuated rivers 
still flow into the Great Basin, but are lost in their 
sands. The greatest of these, the Mohave River, is a 
hundred miles long, but is not often seen because it 
hides its waters chiefly under the surface sands. Lake 
BonneviUe's prehistoric beaches exist to-day. Trans- 
continental passengers by rail cross its ancient bed, 
but few know it. 



ON THE SCENERY OF THE SOUTHWEST 327 

The Great Basin to-day is known to travellers 
principally by the many lesser deserts which compose 
it, deserts separated from each other by lesser moun- 
tain ranges and low divides. Its southern and south- 
eastern boundaries are the plateaus and mountains 
which form the northern watershed of the muddy 
Colorado River and its confluents. South of the 
Colorado, the plateaus of New Mexico, Arizona, and 
southern California gradually subside to the Rio 
Grande. 

During this period and the Quaternary which fol- 
lowed it, volcanoes appeared in many places; their 
dead cones diversify our modem landscape. It was 
during the Quaternary Period, in whose latter end 
lives man, that erosion dug the mighty canyons of our 
great southwest. The Colorado was sweeping out the 
Grand Canyon at the same time that, far in the north, 
the glaciers of the Great Ice Age were carving from 
Algonkian shales and limestones the gorgeous cirques 
and valleys of Glacier National Park. 



XVI 

A PAGEANT OF CREATION 

Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. Area, 958 
Square Miles 

THERE is only one Grand Canyon. It lies in 
northern Arizona, and the Colorado River, one 
of the greatest of American rivers, flows through its 
inner gorge. It must not be confused with the Grand 
Canyon of the Yellowstone, or with any of the grande 
canons which the Spaniards so named because they 
were big canyons. 

The Grand Canyon is 217 miles long, 8 to 12 miles 
wide at the rim, and more than a mile deep. It is 
the Colossus of canyons, by far the hugest example of 
stream erosion in the world. It is gorgeously colored. 
It is by common consent the most stupendous spectacle 
in the world. It may be conceived as a mountain 
range reversed. Could its moulded image, similarly 
colored, stand upon the desert floor, it would be a 
spectacle second only to the vast mould itself. 

More than a hundred thousand persons visit the 
Grand Canyon each year. In other lands it is our 
most celebrated scenic possession. It was made a 
national park in 191 9. 



The Grand Canyon is not of America but of the 

world. Like the Desert of Sahara and the monster 

328 



A PAGEANT OF CREATION 329 

group of the Himalayas, it is so entirely the greatest 
example of its kind that it refuses limits. This is true 
of it also as a spectacle; far truer, in fact, for, if it is 
possible to compare things so dissimilar, in this respect 
certainly it will lead all others. None see it without 
being deeply moved — all to silence, some even to tears. 
It is charged to the rim with emotion ; but the emotion 
of the first view varies. Some stand astounded at its 
vastness. Others are stupefied and search their souls 
in vain for definition. Some tremble. Some are up- 
lifted with a sense of appalling beauty. For a time 
the souls of all are naked in the presence. 

This reaction is apparert in the writings of those 
who have visited it; no other spectacle in America 
has inspired so large a literature. Joaquin Miller 
found it fearful, full of glory, full of God. Charles 
Dudley Warner pronounced it by far the most sub- 
lime of earthly spectacles. William Winter saw it a 
pageant of ghastly desolation. Hamlin Garland found 
its lines chaotic and disturbing but its combinations 
of color and shadow beautiful. Upon John Muir it 
bestowed a new sense of earth's beauty. 

Marius R. Campbell, whose geological researches 
have familiarized him with Nature's scenic gamut, told 
me that his first day on the rim left him emotionally 
cold; it was not until he had lived with the spectacle 
that realization slowly dawned. I think this is the 
experience of very many, a fact which renders still more 
tragic a prevailing public assumption that the Grand 
Canyon is a one-day stop in a transcontinental journey. 



330 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

It is not surprising that wonder is deeply stirred 
by its vastness, its complexity, and the realization of 
Nature's titanic labor in its making. It is far from 
strange that extreme elation sometimes follows upon 
a revelation so stupendous and different. That beauty 
so extraordinary should momentarily free emotion from 
control is natural enough. But why the expressions 
of repulsion not infrequently encountered upon the 
printed pages of the past ? I have personally inquired 
of many of our own day without finding one, even 
among the most sensitive, whom it repelled. Perhaps 
a clew is discovered in the introductory paragraphs of 
an inspired word-picture which the late Clarence E. 
Button hid in a technical geological paper of 1880. 
*'The lover of nature," he wrote, "whose perceptions 
have been trained in the Alps, in Italy, Germany, 
or New England, in the Appalachians or Cordilleras, 
in Scotland or Colorado, would enter this strange 
region with a shock and dwell there with a sense of 
oppression, and perhaps with horror. Whatsoever 
things he had learned to regard as beautiful and noble 
he would seldom or never see, and whatsoever he might 
see would appear to him as anything but beautiful or 
noble. Whatsoever might be bold or striking would 
seem at first only grotesque. The colors would be the 
very ones he had learned to shun as tawdry or bizarre. 
The tones and shades, modest and tender, ^bdued 
yet rich, in which his fancy had always taken special 
delight, would be the ones which are conspicuously 
absent." 



A PAGEANT OF CREATION 331 

I suspect that this repulsion, this horror, as several 
have called it, was bom of the conventions of an earlier 
generation which bound conceptions of taste and 
beauty, as of art, dress, religion, and human relations 
generally, in shackles which do not exist in these days 
of individualism and broad horizons. To-day we see 
the Grand Canyon with profound astonishment but 
without prejudice. Its amazing size, its bewildering 
configuration, its imprecedented combinations of color 
affect the freed and elated consciousness of our times 
as another and perhaps an ultimate revelation in nature 
of law, order, and beauty. 

In these pages I shall make no attempt to describe 
the Grand Canyon. Nature has written her own de- 
scription, graving it with a pen of water in rocks which 
run the series of the eternal ages. Her story can be 
read only in the original; translations are futile. 
Here I shall try only to help a little in the reading. 



n 

The Grand Canyon was cut by one of the great 
rivers of the continent, the Colorado, which enters 
Arizona from the north and swings sharply west; 
thence it turns south to form most of Arizona's western 
boundary, and a few miles over the Mexican border 
empties into the head of the Gulf of California. It 
drains three hundred thousand square miles of Arizona, 
Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado. It is formed in Utah 
by the confluence of the Green and the Grand Rivers. 



332 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

Including the greater of these, the Green River, it 
makes a stream fifteen hundred miles in length which 
collects the waters of the divide south and east of the 
Great Basin and of many ranges of the Rocky Moun- 
tain system. The Grand River, for its contribution, 
collects the drainage of the Rockies' mighty western 
slopes in Colorado. 

The lower reaches of these great tributaries and 
practically all of the Colorado River itself flow through 
more than five hundred miles of canyons which they 
were obliged to dig through the slowly upheaving 
sandstone plateaus in order to maintain their access 
to the sea. Succeeding canyons bear names desig- 
nating their scenic or geologic character. Progressively 
southward they score deeper into the strata of the 
earth's crust until, as they approach their cHmax, 
they break through the bottom of the Paleozoic lime- 
stone deep into the heart of the Archean gneiss. This 
limestone trench is known as the Marble Canyon, the 
Archean trench as the Granite Gorge. The lower part 
of the Marble Canyon and all the Granite Gorge, 
together with their broad, vividly colored and fantas- 
tically carved upper canyon ten miles across from rim 
to rim, a mile high from water to rim-level, the climax 
of the world of canyons and the most gorgeous spec- 
tacle on earth, is the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. 
It lies east and west in the northern part of the State. 

To comprehend it, recall one of those ditches which 
we all have seen crossing level fields or bordering 
country roads. It is broad from rim to rim and deeply 



A PAGEANT OF CREATION 333 

indented by the side washes which follow heavy 
showers. Its sides descend by terraces, steep in 
places with gentle slopes between the steeps, and on 
these slopes are elevations of rock or mud which floods 
have failed to wash away. Finally, in the middle, is 
the narrow trench which now, in dry weather, carries 
a small trickling stream. Not only does this ditch 
roughly t}T3ify the Grand Canyon, reproducing in 
clumsy, inefficient miniature the basic characteristics 
of its outhne, but it also is identical in the process of 
its making. 

Imagining it in cross-section, we find its sides 
leading do\Mi by successive precipices to broad inter- 
mediate sloping surfaces. We find upon these broad 
surfaces enormous mesas and lofty, ornately carved 
edifices of rock which the floods have left standing. 
We find in its middle, winding snakelike from side to 
side, the narrow gorge of the river. 

The parallel goes further. It is not at all neces- 
sary to conceive that either the wayside ditch or the 
Grand Canyon was once brimful of madly dashing 
waters. On the contrary, neither may ever have held 
much greater streams than they hold to-day. In both 
cases the power of the stream has been apphed to 
downward trenching; the greater spreading sides were 
cut by the erosion of countless side streamlets re- 
sulting temporarily from periods of melting snow or of 
local rainfall. It was these streamlets which cut the 
side canyons and left standing between them the bold 
promontories of the rim. It was these streamlets, 



334 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

working from the surface, which separated portions of 
these promontories from the plateau and turned them 
into isolated mesas. It was the erosion of these mesas 
which turned many of them into the gigantic and 
fantastic temples and towers which rise from the 
canyon's bowl. 

Standing upon the rim and overlooking miles of 
these successive precipices and intermediate templed 
levels, we see the dark gorge of the granite trench, 
and, deep within it, wherever its windings permit a 
view of its bottom, a narrow ribbon of brown river.' 
This is the Colorado — a rill; but when we have de- 
scended six thousand feet of altitude to its edge we 
find it a rushing turbulent torrent of muddy water. 
Its average width is three himdred feet; its average 
depth thirty feet. It is industriously digging the Grand 
Canyon stiU deeper, and perhaps as rapidly as it ever 
dug since it entered the granite. 

Developing the thought in greater detail, let us 
glance at the illustrations of this chapter and at any 
photographs which may be at hand, and realization 
wiU begin. Let imagination dart back a million years 
or more to the time when this foreground rim and that 
far rim across the vast chasm are one continuous plain; 
perhaps it is a pine forest, with the river, no greater 
than to-day, perhaps not so great, winding through it 
close to the surface level. As the river cuts downward, 
the spring floods following the winter snows cave in 
its banks here and there, forming sharply slanted 
valleys which enclose promontories between them. 



A PAGEANT OF CREATION 335 

Spring succeeds spring, and these side valleys deepen 
and eat backward while the promontories lengthen and 
grow. The harder strata resist the disintegration of 
alternate heat and cold, and, while always receding, 
hold their form as cliffs; the softer strata between 
the cliffs crumbles and the waste of spring waters 
spreads them out in long flattened slopes. The cen- 
turies pass. The ruin buries itself deep in the soft 
sandstone. The side valleys work miles back into the 
pine forest. Each valley acquires its own system of 
erosion; into each, from either side, enter smaller 
valleys which themselves are eating backward into the 
promontories. 

The great valley of the Colorado now has broad 
converging cliff-broken sides. Here and there these 
indentations meet far in the background behind the 
promontories, isolating island-like mesas. 

The rest of the story is simple repetition. Imagine 
enough thousands of centuries and you will imagine 
the Grand Canyon. Those myriad temples and cas- 
tles and barbaric shrines are aU that the rains and 
melting snows have left of noble mesas, some of which, 
when originally isolated, enclosed, as the marble en- 
closes the future statue, scores of the lesser but mighty 
structures which compose the wonder city of the depths. 

These architectural operations of Nature may be 
seen to-day in midway stages. Find on the map the 
Powell Plateau in the northwest of the canyon. Once 
it was continuous with the rim, .a noble promontory. 
It was cut out from the rim perhaps within the exist- 



336 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

ence of the human race. A few hundred thousand 
years from now it will be one or more Aladdin pal- 
aces. 

Find on the map the great Walhalla Plateau in 
the east of the canyon. Note that its base is nearly 
separated from the parental rim; a thousand centuries 
or so and its isolation will be complete. Not long 
after that, as geologists reckon length of time, it will 
divide into two plateaus; it is easy to pick the place 
of division. The tourist of a million years hence will 
see, where now it stands, a hundred glowing castles. 

Let us look again at our photographs, which now 
we can see with understanding. To realize the spec- 
tacle of the canyon, let imagination paint these strata 
their brilliant colors. It will not be difficult; but here 
again we must understand. 

It is well to recall that these strata were laid in the 
sea, and that they hardened into stone when the earth's 
skin was pushed thousands of feet in air. Originally 
they were the washings of distant highlands brought 
down by rivers; the coloring of the shales and sand- 
stones is that of the parent rock modified, no doubt, 
by chemical action in sea-water. The limestone, 
product of the sea, is gray. 

As these differently colored strata were once con- 
tinuous across the canyon, it follows that their se- 
quence is practically identical on both sides of the can- 
yon. That the colors seem confused is because, view- 
ing the spectacle from an elevation, we see the enormous 
indentations of the opposite rim in broken and dis- 



A PAGEANT OF CREATION 337 

organized perspective. Few minds are patient and 
orderly enough to fully disentangle the kaleidoscopic 
disarray, but, if we can identify the strata by form 
as well as color, we can at least comprehend without 
trouble our principal outline; and comprehension is 
the broad highway to appreciation. 

To identify these strata, it is necessary to call them 
by name. The names that geologists have assigned 
them have no scientific significance other than iden- 
tity; they are Indian and local. 

Beginning at the canyon rim we have a stalwart 
cliff of gray limestone known as the Kaibab Limestone, 
or, conversationally, the Kaibab; it is about seven 
hundred feet thick. Of this product of a milUon years 
of microscopic life and death on sea-bottoms is formed 
the splendid south-rim chffs from which we view the 
chasm. Across the canyon it is always recognizable 
as the rim. 

Below the talus of the Kaibab is the Coconino 
sandstone, light yellowish-gray, coarse of grain, the 
product of swift currents of untold thousands of cen- 
turies ago. This stratum makes a fine bright cliff 
usually about four hundred feet in thickness, an effec- 
tive roofing for the glowing reds of the depths. 

Immediately below the Coconino are the splendid 
red shales and sandstones known as the Supai forma- 
tion. These he in many strata of varying shades, 
quaUties, and thicknesses, but all, seen across the can- 
yon, merging into a single enormous horizontal body 
of gorgeous red. The Supai measures eleven hundred 



338 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

feet in perpendicular thickness, but as it is usually 
seen in slopes which sometimes are long and gentle, 
it presents to the eye a surface several times as broad. 
This is the most prominent single mass of color in the 
canyon, for not only does it form the broadest feature 
of the opposite wall and of the enormous promontories 
which jut therefrom, but the main bodies of Buddha, 
Zoroaster, and many others of the fantastic temples 
which rise from the floor. 

Below the Supai, a perpendicular wall of intense 
red five hundred feet high forces its personality upon 
every foot of the canyon's vast length. This is the 
famous Redwall, a gray Hmestone stained crimson 
with the drip of Supai dye from above. Harder than 
the sloping sandstone above and the shale below, it 
pushes aggressively into the picture, squared, per- 
pendicular, glowing. It winds in and out of every bay 
and gulf, and fronts precipitously every flaring prom- 
ontory. It roofs with overhanging eaves many a noble 
palace and turns many a towering monument into a 
pagoda. 

Next below in series is the Tonto, a deep, broad, 
shallow slant of dull-green and yellow shale, which, 
with the thin broad sandstone base on which it rests, 
forms the floor of the outer canyon, the tessellated 
pavement of the city of flame. Without the Tonto's 
green the spectacle of the Grand Canyon would have 
missed its contrast and its fulness. 

Through this floor the Granite Gorge winds its 
serpentine way, two thousand feet deep, dark with 



A PAGEANT OF CREATION 339 

shadows, shining in places where the river swings in 
view. 

These are the series of form and color. They 
occur with great regularity except in several spots 
deep in the canyon where small patches of gleaming 
quartzites and brilliant red shales show against the 
dark granite; the largest of these lies in the depths 
directly opposite El Tovar. These rocks are all that 
one sees of ancient Algonkian strata which once over- 
lay the granite to a depth of thirteen thousand feet — 
more than twice the present total depth of the canyon. 
The erosion of many thousands of centuries wore them 
away before the rocks that now compose the floor, 
the temples and the precipiced walls of the great can- 
yon were even deposited in the sea as sand and lime- 
stone ooze, a fact that strikingly emphasizes the enor- 
mous age of this exhibit. Geologists speak of these 
splashes of Algonkian rocks as the Unkar group, 
another local Indian designation. There is also a sim- 
ilar Chuar group, which need not concern any except 
those who make a close study of the canyon. 

This is the picture. The imagination may realize 
a fleet, vivid impression from the photograph. The 
visitor upon the rim, outline in hand, may trace its 
twisting elements in a few moments of attentive ob- 
servation, and thereafter enjoy his canyon as one only 
enjoys a new city when he has mastered its scheme 
and spirit, and can mentally classify its details as they 
pass before him. 

To one thus prepared, the Grand Canyon ceases 



340 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

to be the brew-pot of chaotic emotion and becomes the 
orderly revelation of Nature, the master craftsman 
and the divine artist. 

Ill 

Entrance is from the south. The motor-road to 
Grand View is available for most of the year. The 
railroad to the El Tovar Hotel serves the year around, 
for the Grand Canyon is an all-year resort. There 
is a short winter of heavy snows on the rim, but 
not in the canyon, which may be descended at all 
seasons. Both routes terminate on the rim. Always 
dramatic, the Grand Canyon welcomes the pilgrim in 
the full panoply of its appalHng glory. There is no 
waiting in the anteroom, no sounding of trumpets, 
no ceremony of presentation. He stands at once in 
the presence. 

Most visitors have bought tickets at home which 
permit only one day's stay. The irrecoverable sen- 
sation of the first view is broken by the necessity for 
an immediate decision upon how to spend that day, 
for if one is to descend horseback to the river he must 
engage his place and don his riding-clothes at once. 
Under this stress the majority elect to remain on the 
rim for reasons wholly apart from any question of 
respective merit. 

After all, if only one day is possible, it is the wise 
decision. With the rim road, over which various drives 
are scheduled, and several commanding points to whose 
precipices one may walk, it will be a day to remember 



A PAGEANT OF CREATION 341 

for a lifetime. One should not attempt too much in 
this one day. It is enough to sit in the presence of the 
spectacle. Fortunate is he who may stay another 
day and descend the trail into the streets of this vast 
city; many times fortunate he who may live a little 
amid its glories. 

Because of this general habit of ''seeing " the Grand 
Canyon between sunrise and sunset, the admirable 
hotel accommodations are not extensive, but sufficient. 
There are cottage accommodations also at cheaper 
rates. Hotels and cottages are well patronized sum- 
mer and winter. Upon the rim are unique rest- 
houses, in one of which is a high-power telescope. 
There is a memorial altar to John Wesley Powell, the 
first explorer of the canyon. There is an excellent re- 
production of a Hopi house. There is an Indian camp. 
The day's wanderer upon the rim will not lack enter- 
tainment when his eyes turn for rest from the chasm. 

From the hotel, coaches make regular trips daily 
to various view-points. Hopi Point, Mohave Point, 
Yavapai Point, and Grandeur Point may all be visited; 
the run of eight miles along the famous Hermit Rim 
Road permits brief stops at Hopi, Mohave, and Pima 
Points. Automobiles also make regular runs to the 
gorgeous spectacle from Grand View. Still more dis- 
tant points may be made in private or hired cars. 
Navajo Point offers unequalled views up and down the 
full length of the canyon, and an automobile-road will 
bring the visitor within easy reach of Bass Camp near 
Havasupai Point in the far west of the reservation. 



342 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

Many one-day visitors take none of these stage 
and automobile trips, contented to dream the hours 
away upon Yavapai or Hopi Points near by. After 
all, it is just as well. A single view-point cannot be 
mastered in one's first day, so what's the use of others ? 
On the other hand, seeing the same view from different 
view-points miles apart will enrich and elaborate it. 
Besides, one should see many views in order to acquire 
some conception, however small, of the intricacy and 
grandeur of the canyon. Besides, these trips help to 
rest the eyes and mind. It is hard indeed to advise 
the unlucky one-day visitor. It is as if a dyspeptic 
should lead you to an elaborate banquet of a dozen 
courses, and say: "I have permission to eat three 
bites. Please help me choose them." 

Wherever he stands upon the rim the appalling 
silence hushes the voice to whispers. No cathedral 
imposes stillness so complete. It is sacrilege to speak, 
almost to move. And yet the Grand Canyon is a 
moving picture. It changes every moment. Always 
shadows are disappearing here, appearing there; short- 
ening here, lengthening there. With every passing 
hour it becomes a different thing. It is a sun-dial of 
mommiental size. 

In the early morning the light streams down the 
canyon from the east. Certain promontories shoot 
miles into the picture, gleaming in vivid color, backed 
by dark shadows. Certain palaces and temples stand 
in magnificent relief. The inner gorge is brilliantly 
outlined in certain places. As the day advances these 



A PAGEANT OF CREATION 343 

prominences shift positions; some fade; some disap- 
pear; still others spring into view. 

As midday approaches the shadows fade; the 
promontories flatten; the towering edifices move 
bodily backward and merge themselves in the opposite 
rim. There is a period of several hours when the 
whole canyon has become a solid wall; strata fail to 
match; eye and mind become confused; comprehen- 
sion is baffled by the tangle of disconnected bands of 
color; the watcher is distressed by an oppressive sense 
of helplessness. 

It is when afternoon is well advanced that the 
magician sun begins his most astonishing miracles in 
the canyon's depths. Out from the blazing wall, one 
by one, step the mighty obelisks and palaces, defined 
by ever-changing shadows. Unsuspected promonto- 
ries emerge, undreamed-of guKs sink back in the per- 
spective. The serpentine gorge appears here, fades 
there, seems almost to move in the slow-changing 
shadows. I shaU not try even to suggest the soul- 
uplifting spectacle which culminates in sunset. 

Days may be spent upon the rim in many forms 
of pleasure; short camping trips may be made to dis- 
tant points. 

The descent into the canyon is usually made from 
El Tovar down the Bright Angel Trail, so called be- 
cause it faces the splendid Bright Angel Canyon of the 
north side, and by the newer Hermit Trail which starts 
a few miles west. There are trails at Grand View, 
eight miles east, and at Bass Camp, twenty-four miles 



344 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

west of El Tovar, which are seldom used now. All 
go to the bottom of the Granite Gorge. The com- 
monly used trails may be travelled afoot by those 
physically able, and on mule-back by any person of any 
age who enjoys ordinary health. The Bright Angel 
trip returns the traveller to the rim at day's end. The 
Hermit Trail trip camps him overnight on the floor of 
the canyon at the base of a magic temple. The finest 
trip of all takes him down the Hermit Trail, gives him 
a night in the depths, and returns him to the rim by the 
Bright Angel Trail. Powell named Bright Angel Creek 
during that memorable first passage through the Can- 
yon. He had just named a muddy creek Dirty Devil, 
which suggested, by contrast, the name of Bright 
Angel for a stream so pure and sparkling. 

The Havasupai Indian reservation may be visited 
in the depths of Cataract Canyon by following the trail 
from Bass Camp. 

The first experience usually noted in the descent 
is the fine quaUty of the trail, gentle in slope and 
bordered by rock on the steep side. The next experi- 
ence is the disappearance of the straight uncompro- 
mising horizon of the opposite rim, which is a distinc- 
tive feature of every view from above. As soon as the 
descent fairly begins, even the smaller bluffs and prom- 
ontories assume towering proportions, and, from the 
Tonto floor, the mighty elevations of Cheops, Isis, 
Zoroaster, Shiva, Wotan, and the countless other 
temples of the abyss become mountains of enormous 
height. 



A PAGEANT OF CREATION 345 

From the river's side the elevations of the Granite 
Gorge present a new series of precipitous towers, back 
of which in places loom the tops of the painted palaces, 
and back of them, from occasional favored view-spots, 
the far-distant rim. Here, and here only, does the 
Grand Canyon reveal the fulness of its meaning. 

IV 

The Grand Canyon was discovered in 1540 by 
El Tovar, one of the captains of Cardenas, in charge 
of one of the expeditions of the Spanish explorer, 
Diaz, who was hunting for seven fabled cities of vast 
wealth. ''They reached the banks of a river which 
seemed to be more than three or four leagues above 
the stream that flowed between them." It was seen 
in 1776 by a Spanish priest who sought a crossing and 
found one at a point far above the canyon; this still 
bears the name Vado de los Padres. 

By 1840 it was probably known to the trappers 
who overran the country. In 1850 Lieutenant Whip- 
ple, surveying for a Pacific route, explored the Black 
Canyon and ascended the Grand Canyon to Diamond 
Creek. 

In 1857 Lieutenant Ives, sent by the War Depart- 
ment to test the navigability of the Colorado, ascended 
as far as the Virgin River in a steamboat which he had 
shipped in pieces from Philadelphia. From there he en- 
tered the Grand Canyon afoot, cUmbed to the rim, and, 
making a detour, encountered the river again higher 



346 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

up. In 1867 James White was picked up below the 
Virgin River lashed to floating logs. He said that his 
hunting-party near the head of the Colorado River, 
attacked by Indians, had escaped upon a raft. This 
presently broke up in the rapids and his companions 
were lost. He lashed himself to the wreckage and was 
washed through the Grand Canyon. 

About this time Major John Wesley Powell, a 
school-teacher who had lost an arm in the Civil War, 
determined to explore the great canyons of the Green 
and Colorado Rivers. Besides the immense benefit 
to science, the expedition promised a great adventure. 
Many lives had been lost in these canyons and wonder- 
ful were the tales told concerning them. Indians re- 
ported that huge cataracts were hidden in their depths 
and that in one place the river swept through an un- 
derground passage. 

Nevertheless, with the financial backing of the 
State institutions of Illinois and the Chicago Academy 
of Science, Powell got together a party of ten men 
with four open boats, provisions for ten months, and 
all necessary scientific instruments. He started above 
the canyons of the Green River on May 24, 1869. 

There are many canyons on the Green and Colo- 
rado Rivers. They vary in length from eight to a 
hundred and fifty miles, with walls successively rising 
from thirteen hundred to thirty-five hundred feet in 
height. The climax of all, the Grand Canyon, is two 
hundred and seventeen miles long, with walls six 
thousand feet in height. 



A PAGEANT OF CREATION 347 

On August 17, when Powell and his adventurers 
reached the Grand Canyon, their rations had been 
reduced by upsets and other accidents to enough musty 
flour for ten days, plenty of coffee, and a few dried 
apples. The bacon had spoiled. Most of the scientific 
instruments were in the bottom of the river. One 
boat was destroyed. The men were wet to the skin 
and unable to make a fire. In this phght they entered 
the Grand Canyon, somewhere in whose depths a 
great cataract had been reported. 

The story of the passage is too long to tell here. 
Chilled, hungry, and worn, they struggled through it. 
Often they were obliged to let their boats down steep 
rapids by ropes, and clamber after them along the 
slippery precipices. Often there was nothing to do 
but to climb into their boats and run down long foam- 
ing slants around the comers of which death, perhaps, 
awaited. Many times they were upset and barely 
escaped with their Hves. With no wraps or clothing 
that were not soaked with water, there were nights 
when they could not sleep for the cold. 

So the days passed and the food lessened to a few 
handfuls of wet flour. The dangers increased; some 
falls were twenty feet in height. Finally three of the 
men determined to desert; they believed they could 
climb the walls and that their chances would be 
better with the Indians than with the canyon. Powell 
endeavored to dissuade them, but they were firm. 
He offered to divide his flour with them, but this they 
refused. 



348 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

These men, two Howlands, brothers, and Wilham 
Dunn, cKmbed the canyon walls and were killed by 
Indians. Two or three days later Powell and the rest 
of his party emerged below the Grand Canyon, where 
they found food and safety. 

Taught by the experience of this great adventure, 
Powell made a second trip two years later which was 
a scientific achievement. Later on he became Director 
of the United States Geological Survey. 

Since then, the passage of the Grand Canyon has 
been made several times. R. B. Stanton made it in 
1889 in the course of a survey for a proposed railroad 
through the canyon; one of the leaders of the party 
was drowned. 

V 

The history of the Grand Canyon has been in- 
dustriously collected. It remains for others to gather 
the legends. It is enough here to quote from Powell 
the Indian story of its origin. 

"Long ago," he writes, "there was a great and 
wise chief who mourned the death of his wife, and 
would not be comforted until Tavwoats, one of the 
Indian gods, came to him and told him his wife was in 
a happier land, and offered to take him there that he 
might see for himself, if, upon his return, he would cease 
to mourn. The great chief promised. Then Tav- 
woats made a trail through the mountains that inter- 
vene between that beautiful land, the balmy region 
of the great West, and this, the desert home of the 



A PAGEANT OF CREATION 349 

poor Numa. This trail was the canyon gorge of the 
Colorado. Through it he led him; and when they 
had returned the deity exacted from the chief a promise 
that he would teU no one of the trail. Then he rolled 
a river into the gorge, a mad, raging stream, that should 
engulf any that might attempt to enter thereby." 

yi 

The bill creating the Grand Canyon National 
Park passed Congress early in 1919, and was signed 
by President Wilson on February 26. This closed 
an intermittent campaign of thirty-three years, be- 
gun by President Harrison, then senator from In- 
diana, in January, 1886, to make a national park of 
the most stupendous natural spectacle in the world. 
Politics, private interests, and the deliberation of 
governmental procedure were the causes of delay. A 
self-evident proposition from the beginning, it illus- 
trates the enormous difficulties which confront those 
who labor to develop our national-parks system. The 
story is worth the telling. 

Senator Harrison's bill of 1886 met an instant 
response from the whole nation. It called for a na- 
tional park fifty-six miles long and sixty-nine miles 
wide. There was opposition from Arizona and the 
bill failed. In 1893 the Grand Canyon National For- 
est was created. In 1898, depredations and unlawful 
seizures of land having been reported, the Secretary 
of the Interior directed the Land-Ofiice to prepare a 



350 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

new national-park bill. In 1899 the Land-Office re- 
ported that the bill could not be drawn until the region 
was surveyed. It took the Geological Survey five 
years to make the survey. The bill was not prepared 
because meantime it was discovered that the Atlantic 
and Pacific Railroad, now the Santa Fe, owned rights 
which first must be eliminated. 

Failing to become a national park, President Roose- 
velt proclaimed the Grand Canyon a national monu- 
ment in 1908. In 1909 a bill was introduced entitling 
Ralph H. Cameron to build a scenic railway along the 
canyon rim, which created much adverse criticism 
and failed. In 1910 the American Scenic and His- 
toric Preservation Society proposed a biU to create 
the Grand Canyon a national park of large size. The 
Geological Survey, to which it was referred, recom- 
mended a much smaller area. By the direction of 
President Taft, Senator Flint introduced a national- 
park biU which differed from both suggestions. The 
opposition of grazing interests threw it into the hands 
of conferees. In 191 1 Senator Flint introduced the 
conferees' biU, but it was opposed by private interests 
and failed. 

Meantime the country became aroused. Patri- 
otic societies petitioned for a national park, and the 
National Federation of Women's Clubs began an agi- 
tation. The Department of the Interior prepared a 
map upon which to base a bill, and for several years 
negotiated with the Forest Service, which administered 
the Grand Canyon as a national monument, concern- 



A PAGEANT OF CREATION 351 

ing boundaries. Finally the boundaries were reduced 
to little more than the actual rim of the canyon, and 
a bill was prepared which Senator Ashurst introduced 
in February, 191 7. It failed in committee in the 
House owing to opposition from Arizona. It was the 
same bill, again introduced by Senator Ashurst in the 
new Congress two months later, which finally passed 
the House and became a law in 191 9; but it required 
a favoring resolution by the Arizona legislature to 
pave the way. 

Meantime many schemes were launched to utilize 
the Grand Canyon for private gain. It was plastered 
thickly with mining claims, though the Geological 
Survey showed that it contained no minerals worth 
mining; mining claims helped delay. Schemers sought 
capital to utilize its waters for power. Railroads were 
projected. Plans were drawn to run sightseeing cars 
across it on wire cables. These were the interests, 
and many others, which opposed the national park. 



XVII 

THE RAINBOW OF THE DESERT 

ZioN National Monument, Southern Utah. Area, 120 
Square Miles 

WHEN, in the seventies, Major J. W. Powell, 
the daring adventurer of the Grand Canyon, 
faced Salt Lake City on his return from one of his 
notable geological explorations of the southwest, he 
laid his course by a temple of rock "lifting its opal- 
escent shoulders against the eastern sky." His party 
first sighted it across seventy miles of a desert which 
"rose in a series of Cyclopean steps." When, climb- 
ing these, they had seen the West Temple of the Virgin 
revealed in the glory of vermilion body and shining 
white dome, and had gazed between the glowing Gates 
of Little Zion into the gorgeous valley within, these 
scenery-sated veterans of the Grand Canyon and the 
Painted Desert passed homeward profoundly impressed 
and planning quick return. 

No wonder that Brigham Young, who had visited 
it many years before with a party of Mormons seek- 
ing a refuge in event of Indian raids or of exile from 
their Zion, Salt Lake City, had looked upon its glory 
as prophetic, and named it Little Zion. 

Geologists found the spot a fruitful field of study. 

They found it also a masterpiece of desert beauty. 

353 



THE RAINBOW OF THE DESERT 353 

"Again we are impressed with the marvellous 
beauty of outline, the infinite complication of these 
titanic buttes," wrote F. S. Dellenbaugh, topographer 
of the Powell party, on his second visit. "It is doubt- 
ful if in this respect the valley has its equal. Not 
even the Grand Canyon offers a more varied spectacle; 
yet all is welded together in a superb ensemble." 

"Nothing can exceed the wondrous beauty of 
Little Zion Canyon," wrote C. E. Button. "In its 
proportions it is about equal to Yosemite, but in the 
nobility and beauty of its sculptures there is no com- 
parison. It is Hyperion to a Satyr. No wonder the 
fierce Mormon zealot who named it was reminded of 
the Great Zion on which his fervid thoughts were 
bent, of 'houses not built with hands, eternal in the 
heavens.'" 

And Doctor G. K. Gilbert, whose intimate study 
of its recesses has become a geological classic, declared 
it "the most wonderful defile" that it had been even 
his experienced fortune to behold. 

Technical literature contains other outbursts of 
enthusiastic admiration, some of eloquence, hidden, 
however, among pages so incomprehensible to the 
average lover of the sublime in Nature that the glory 
of Little Zion was lost in its very discovery. So remote 
did it lie from the usual lines of travel and trafl&c that, 
though its importance resulted in its conservation as a 
national monument in 1909, it was six or seven years 
more before its fame as a spectacle of the first order 
began to get about. The tales of adventurous explor- 



Top of Plateau 



354 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

ers, as usual, were discounted. It was not until agen- 
cies seeking new tourist attractions sent parties to 
verify reports that the public gaze was centred upon 
the canyon's supreme loveliness. 

To picture Zion one must recall that the great 
plateau in which the Virgin 
River has sunk these can- 
yons was once enormously 
higher than now. The ero- 
sion of hundreds of thou- 
sands, or, if you please, mil- 
lions of years, has cut down 
and still is cutting down the 
plateau. These " Cyclopean 
steps," each step the thick- 
ness of a stratum or a series 
of strata of hardened sands, 
mark progressive stages in 
the decomposition of the 
whole. 

Little Zion Canyon is an 
early stage in Nature's pro- 
cess of levelling still another 
sandstone step, that is all; 
this one fortunately of many gorgeous hues. From 
the top of this layer we may look down thousands 
of vertical feet into the painted canyon whose river 
still is sweeping out the sands that Nature chisels 
from the chffs; or from the canyon's bottom we may 
look up thousands of feet to the cliffed and serrated 




THE RAINBOW OF THE DESERT 355 

top of the doomed plateau. These ornate precipices 
were carved by trickling water and tireless winds. 
These fluted and towered temples of master decoration 
were disclosed when watery chisels cut away the sands 
that formerly had merged them with the ancient rock, 
just as the Lion of Lucerne was disclosed for the joy 
of the world when Thorwaldsen's chisel chipped away 
the Alpine rock surrounding its unformed image. 

The colors are even more extraordinary than the 
forms. The celebrated Vermilion Cliff, which for 
more than a hundred miles streaks the desert landscape 
with vivid red, here combines spectacularly with the 
White Cliff, another famous desert feature — two thou- 
sand feet of the red surmounted by a thousand feet of 
the white. These constitute the body of color. 

But there are other colors. The VermiHon CHff 
rests upon the so-called Painted Desert stratum, three 
hundred and fifty feet of a more insistent red relieved 
by mauve and purple shale. That in turn rests upon 
a hundred feet of brown conglomerate streaked with 
gray, the grave of reptiles whose bones have survived 
a milHon years or more. And that rests upon the 
greens and grays and yellows of the Belted Shales. 

Nor is this all, for far in the air above the wonder- 
ful White Cliff rise in places six hundred feet of drab 
shales and chocolate limestones intermixed with crim- 
sons whose escaping dye drips in broad vertical streaks 
across the glistening white. And even above that, in 
places, lie remnants of the mottled, many-colored beds 
of St. Elmo shales and limestones in whose embrace, 



356 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

a few hundred miles away, lie embedded the bones of 
many monster dinosaurs of ages upon ages ago. 

Through these successive layers of sands and 
shales and limestones, the deposits of a million years 
of earth's evolution, colored like a Roman sash, glow- 
ing in the sun like a rainbow, the Virgin River has cut 
a vertical section, and out of its sides the rains of cen- 
turies of centuries have detached monster monohths 
and temples of marvellous size and fantastic shape, 
upon whose many-angled surfaces water and wind 
have sculptured ten thousand fanciful designs and 
decorations. 

The way in to this desert masterpiece of southern 
Utah is a hundred miles of progressive preparation. 
From railroad to canyon there is not an unuseful mile 
or hour. It is as if all were planned, step by step, to 
make ready the mind of the traveller to receive the 
revelation with fullest comprehension. 

To one approaching who does not know the desert, 
the motion-picture on the screen of the car-window is 
exciting in its mystery. These vast arid bottom- 
lands of prehistoric Lake BonnevDle, girded by moun- 
tain groups and ranges as arid as the sands from which 
they lift their tawny sides, provoke suggestive ques- 
tions of the past. 

In this receptive mood the traveller reaches Lund 
and an automobile. The ride to Cedar City, where he 
spends the night, shows him the sage-dotted desert at 
close range. His horizon is one of bare, rugged moim- 
tains. In front of him rise the "Cyclopean steps" in 



THE RAINBOW OF THE DESERT 357 

long, irregular, deeply indented sweeps. The vivid 
Pink Cliff, which, had it not long since been washed 
away from Little Zion, would have added another tier 
of color to its top, here, on the desert, remains a dis- 
tant horizon. The road climbs Lake Bonneville's 
southern shore, and, at Cedar City, reaches the glorified 
sandstones. 

From Cedar City to the canyon one sweeps through 
Mormon settlements founded more than sixty years 
ago, a region of stream-watered valleys known of old 
as Dixie. The road is part of the Arrowhead Trail, 
once in fact a historic trail, now a motor-highway 
between Salt Lake and Los Angeles. The valleys 
bloom. Pomegranates, figs, peaches, apricots, melons, 
walnuts, and almonds reach a rare perfection. Cot- 
ton, which Brigham Young started here as an experi- 
ment in 1861, is still grown. Lusty cottonwood-trees 
line the banks of the little rivers. Cedars dot the val- 
leys and cover thickly the lower hills. And everywhere, 
on every side, the arid cliffs close in. The Pink Cliff 
has been left behind, but the Vermihon Cliff constantly 
appears. The White Cliff enters and stays. Long 
stretches of road overlie one and another colored 
stratum; presently the ground is prevailingly red, 
with here and there reaches of mauve, yellow, green, 
and pink. 

Cedar City proves to be a quaint, straggling Mor- 
mon village with a touch of modem enterprise; south 
of Cedar City the villages lack the enterprise. The 
houses are of a gray composition resembling adobe, and 



3S8 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

many of them are half a century old and more. 
Dilapidated square forts, reminders of pioneer strug- 
gles with the Indians, are seen here and there. Com- 
pact Mormon churches are in every settlement, how- 
ever small. The men are bearded, coatless, and wear 
baggy trousers, suggestive of Holland. Bronzed and 
deliberate women, who drive teams and work the fields 
with the men, wear old-fashioned sunbonnets. Many 
of these people have never seen a railroad-train. News- 
papers are scarce and long past date. Here Mor- 
monism of the older fashion is a living religion, affect- 
ing the routine of daily life. 

Dixie is a land of plenty, but it is a foreign land. 
It is reminiscent, with many differences, of an Algerian 
oasis. The traveller is immensely interested. Some- 
how these strange primitive villages, these simple, 
earnest. God-fearing people, merge into unreality with 
the desert, the sage-dotted mountains, the cedar- 
covered slopes, the blooming valleys, the colored sands, 
and the vivid cliffs. 

Through Bellevue, ToquerviUe, the ruins of Vir- 
gin City, Rockville, and finally to Springdale winds 
the road. Meantime the traveller has speeded south 
under the Hurricane Cliff, which is the ragged edge 
left when aU the land west of it sank two thousand feet 
during some geologic time long past. He reaches the 
Virgin River where it emerges from the great cliffs in 
whose recesses it is bom, and whence it carries in its 
broad muddy surge the products of their steady dis- 
integration. 



THE RAINBOW OF THE DESERT 359 

From here on, swinging easterly up-stream, sen- 
sation hastens to its chmax. Flere the Hurricane 
CUflf sends aloft an impressive butte painted in slanting 
colors and capped with black basalt. Farther on a 
rugged promontory striped with vivid tints pushes out 
from the southern wall nearly to the river's brink. 
The cliffs on both sides of the river are carved from 
the stratum which geologists call the Belted Shales. 
Greenish-grays, brownish-yellows, many shades of 
bright red, are prominent; it is hard to name a color 
or shade which is not represented in its horizontal 
bands. "The eye tires and the mind flags in their 
presence," writes Professor WilKs T. Lee. ''To try to 
realize in an hour's time the beauty and variety of detail 
here presented is as useless as to try to grasp the 
thoughts expressed in whole rows of volumes by walk- 
ing through a library." 

Far up the canyon which North Creek pushes 
through this banded cliff, two towering cones of glis- 
tening white are well named Guardian Angels — of the 
stream which roars between their feet. Eagle Crag, 
which Moran painted, looms into view. On the south 
appears the majestic massing of needle-pointed towers 
which Powell named the Pinnacles of the Virgin. 
The spectacular confuses with its brilliant variations. 

At the confluence of the Virgin River and its 
North Fork, known of old as the Parunuweap and the 
Mukuntuweap, the road sweeps northward up the 
Mukuntuweap. There have been differing reports of 
the meaning of this word, which gave the original name 



360 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

to the national monument. It has been popularly ac- 
cepted as meaning ''Land of God, " but John R. Wallis, 
of St. George, Utah, has traced it to its original Indian 
source. Mukuntuweap, he writes, means ''Land of the 
Springs," and Parunuweap "Land of the Birds." 

Reaching Springdale, at the base of the Vermilion 
Cliff, the traveller looks up-stream to the valley mouth 
through which the river emerges from the cliffs, and 
a spectacle without parallel meets his eye. Left of the 
gorgeous entrance rises the unbelievable West Temple 
of the Virgin, and, merging with it from behind, loom 
the lofty Towers of the Virgin. Opposite these, and 
back from the canyon's eastern brink, rises the loftier 
and even more majestic East Temple of the Virgin. 
Between them he sees a perspective of red and white 
walls, domes, and oinnacles which thrills him with 
expectation. 

And so, fully prepared in mind and spirit, awed 
and exultant, he enters Zion. 

Few natural objects which have been described 
so seldom have provoked such extravagant praise as 
the West Temple. It is seen from a foreground of 
gliding river, cotton-wood groves, and talus slopes 
dotted with manzanita, sage, cedars, and blooming 
cactus. From a stairway of mingled yellows, reds, 
grays, mauves, purples, and chocolate brown, it springs 
abruptly four thousand feet. Its body is a brilliant 
red. Its upper third is white. It has the mass and 
proportions, the dignity and grandeur, of a cathedral. 
It is supremely difficult to realize that it was not de- 



THE RAINBOW OF THE DESERT 361 

signed, so true to human conception are the upright 
form and mass of its central structure, the proportion- 
ing and modelling of its extensive wings and buttresses. 
On top of the lofty central rectangle rests, above its 
glistening white, a low squared cap of deepest red. 
It is a temple in the full as well as the noblest sense of 
the word. 

The East Temple, which rises directly opposite 
and two miles back from the rim, is a fitting companion. 
It is a thousand feet higher. Its central structure is a 
steep truncated cone capped like the West Temple. 
Its wings are separated half-way down, one an elon- 
gated pyramid and the other a true cone, both of mag- 
nificent size and bulk but truly proportioned to the 
central mass. Phrase does not convey the suggestion 
of architectural calculation in both of these stupen- 
dous monuments. One can easily believe that the Mor- 
mon prophet in naming them saw them the designed 
creations of a personal deity. 

A more definite conception of Nature's gigantic 
processes follows upon realization that these lofty 
structures once joined across the canyon, stratum for 
stratum, color for color. The rock that joined them, 
disintegrated by the frosts and rains, has passed down 
the muddy current of the Virgin, down the surging 
tide of the Colorado, through the Grand Canyon, and 
into the Pacific. Some part of these sands doubtless 
helped to build the peninsula of Lower California. 

Passing the gates the traveller stands in a trench 
of nearly perpendicular sides more than half a mile 



362 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

deep, half a mile wide at the bottom, a mile wide from 
crest to crest. The proportions and measurements 
suggest Yosemite, but there is little else in common. 
These walls blaze with color. On the west the Streaked 
Wall, carved from the White Cliff, is stained with the 
drip from the red and drab and chocolate shales and 
limestones not yet wholly washed from its top. It is 
a vivid thing, wonderfully eroded. Opposite is the 
Brown Wall, rich in hue, supporting three stupendous 
structures of gorgeous color, two of which are known 
as the Mountain of the Sun and the Watchman. To- 
gether they are the Sentinels. Passing these across a 
plaza apparently broadened for their better presenta- 
tion rise on the west the Three Patriarchs, Yosemite- 
like in form, height, and bulk, but not in personality 
or color. The briUiance of this wonder-spot passes 
description. 

Here the canyon contracts, and we come to the 
comfortable hotel-camp, terminal of the automobile 
journey. It is on the river side in a shady alcove of 
the east wall near a spring. Here horses may be had 
for exploration. 

A mile above the camp stands one of the most 
remarkable monoliths of the region. El Gobemador 
is a colossal truncated dome, red below and white 
above. The white crown is heavily marked in two 
directions, suggesting the web and woof of drapery. 
Directly opposite, a lesser monolith, nevertheless gi- 
gantic, is suggestively if sentunentally called Angel's 
Landing. A natural bridge which is still in Nature's 




•^^aa^mt 



- iiifriiB-'i 



Frnm a photograph hy Douglas While 

EL GOBERNADOR, ZION NATIONAL MONUMENT 

Three thousand feet high; the lower two thousand feet is a brilliant red. the upper thousand 

feet is white 



THE RAINBOW OF THE DESERT 363 

workshop is one of the interesting spectacles of this 
vicinity. Its splendid arch is fully formed, but the 
wall against which it rests its full length remains, 
broken through in one spot only. How many thou- 
sands or hundreds of thousands of years will be re- 
quired to wipe away the wall and leave the bridge 
complete is for those to guess who will. 

Here also is the valley end of a wire cable which 
passes upward twenty-five hundred feet to cross a 
break in the wall to a forest on the mesa's top. Lum- 
ber is Dixie's most hardly furnished need. For years 
sawn timbers have been cabled down into the valley 
and carted to the vUlages of the Virgin River. 

In some respects the most fascinating part of 
Little Zion is still beyond. A mile above El Gober- 
nador the river swings sharply west and doubles on 
itself. Raspberry Bend is far nobler than its name 
implies, and the Great Organ which the river here en- 
circles exacts no imaginative effort. Beyond this the 
canyon narrows rapidly. The road has long since 
stopped, and soon the trail stops. Presently the river, 
now a shrunken stream, concealing occasional quick- 
sands, offers the only footing. The walls are no less 
lofty, no less richly colored, and the weary traveller 
works his difficult way forward. 

There will come a time if he persists when he may 
stand at the bottom of a chasm more than two thou- 
sand feet deep and, nearly touching the walls on either 
side, look up and see no sky. 

"At the water's edge the walls are perpendicular," 



364 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

writes Doctor G. K. Gilbert, of the U. S. Geological 
Survey, who first described it, "but in the deeper parts 
they open out toward the top. As we entered and 
found our outlook of sky contracted — as we had never 
before seen it between canyon cliffs — I measured the 
aperture above, and found it thirty-five degrees. We 
had thought this a minimum, but soon discovered our 
error. Nearer and nearer the walls approached, and 
our strip of blue narrowed down to twenty degrees, 
then ten, and at last was even intercepted by the 
overhanging rocks. There was, perhaps, no point 
from which, neither forward nor backward, could we 
discover a patch of sky, but many times our upward 
view was completely cut off by the interlocking of the 
walls, which, remaining nearly parallel to each other, 
warped in and out as they ascended." 

Here he surprises the secret of the making of Zion. 

"As a monument of denudation, this chasm is an 
example of downward erosion by sand-bearing water. 
The principle on which the cutting depends is almost 
identical with that of the marble saw, but the sand 
grains, instead of being embedded in rigid iron, are 
carried by a flexible stream of water. By gravity they 
have been held against the bottom of the cut, so that 
they should make it vertical, but the current has car- 
ried them, in places, against one side or the other, 
and so far modified the influence of gravity that the 
cut imdulates somewhat in its vertical section, as well 
as in its horizontal." 

This, then, is how Nature began, on the original 



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f row; a photograph by the U. S. Geologicjl Survey 

ZION CANYON FROM THE RIM 




THE THREE PATRIARCHS, ZION CANYON 
These retl-and-whitc structures rise more than two thousand feet above the canyon floor 



THE RAINBOW OF THE DESERT 365 

surface of the plateau, perhaps with the output of a 
spring shower, to dig this whole mighty spectacle for 
our enjoyment to-day. We may go further. We may 
imagine the beginning of the titanic process that dug 
the millions of millions of chasms, big and little, con- 
tributing to the mighty Colorado, that dug the Grand 
Canyon itself, that reduced to the glorified thing it now 
is the enormous plateau of our great southwest, which 
would have been many thousands of feet higher 
than the highest pinnacle of Little Zion had not erosion 
more than counteracted the upHfting of the plateau. 

Little else need be said to complete this picture. 
The rains and melting snows of early spring produce 
mesa- top torrents which pour into the valley and hasten 
for a period the processes of decorating the walls and 
levelling the plateau. So it happens that waterfalls 
of power and beauty then enrich this wondrous spec- 
tacle. But this added beauty is not for the tourist, 
who may come in comfort only after its disappearance. 

But springs are many. Trickling from various 
levels in the walls, they develop new tributary gorges. 
Gushing from the foundations, they create alcoves and 
grottos which are in sharp contrast with their desert 
environment, enriching by dampness the colors of the 
sandstone and decorating these refreshment-places 
with trailing ferns and flowering growths. In these 
we see the origin of the Indian name, Mukuntuweap, 
Land of the Springs. 

The Indians, however, always stood in awe of 
Little Zion. They entered it, but feared the night. 



366 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

In 1918 President Wilson changed the name from 
Mnkuntuweap to Zion. At the same time he greatly 
enlarged the reservation. Zion National Monmnent 
now includes a large area of great and varied desert 
magnificence, including the sources and canyons of 
two other streams besides Mukuntuweap. 



XVIII 

HISTORIC MONUMENTS OF THE SOUTHWEST 

ELEVEN national monuments in the States of 
Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado illustrate 
the history of our southwest from the times when pre- 
historic man dwelt in caves hollowed in desert preci- 
pices down through the Spanish fathers' centuries of 
self-sacrifice and the Spanish explorers' romantic search 
for the Quivira and the Seven Cities of Cibola. 

The most striking feature of the absorbing story 
of the Spanish occupation is its twofold inspiration. 
Hand in hand the priest and the soldier boldly invaded 
the desert. The passion of the priest was the saving 
of souls, and the motive of the soldier was the greed 
of gold. The priest deprecated the soldier; the soldier 
despised the priest. Each used the other for the 
realization of his own purposes. The zealous priest, 
imposing his religion upon the shrinking Indian, did 
not hesitate to invoke the soldier's aid for so holy a 
purpose; the soldier used the gentle priest to cloak 
the greedy business of wringing wealth from the frugal 
native. Together, they hastened civilization. 

Glancing for a moment still further back, the 
rapacious hordes already had gutted the rich stores of 
Central America and the northern regions of South 
America. The rush of the lustful conqueror was as- 

367 



368 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

tonishingly swift. Columbus himself was as eager 
for gold as he was zealous for religion. From the dis- 
covery of America scarcely twenty years elapsed be- 
fore Spanish armies were violently plundering the 
Caribbean Islands, ruthlessly subjugating Mexico, 
overrunning Venezuela, and eagerly seeking tidings of 
the reputed wealth of Peru. The air was supercharged 
with reports of treasure, and no reports were too wild 
for beUef; myths, big and little, ran amuck. El 
Dorado, the gilded man of rumor, became the dream, 
then the belief, of the times; presently a whole nation 
was conceived clothed in dusted gold. The myth of 
the Seven Cities of Cibola, each a city of vast treasure, 
the growth of years of rumor, seems to have perfected 
itself back home in Spain. The twice-born myth of 
Quivira, city of gold, which cost thousands of lives and 
hundreds of thousands of Spanish ducats, lives even 
to-day in remote neighborhoods of the southwest. 

Pizarro conquered Peru in 1526; by 1535, with the 
south looted, Spanish eyes looked longingly north- 
ward. In 1539 Fray Marcos, a Franciscan, made a 
reconnaissance from the Spanish settlements of Sonora 
into Arizona with the particular purpose of locating 
the seven cities. The following year Coronado, at his 
own expense, made the most romantic exploration in 
human history. Spanish expectation may be mea- 
sured by the cost of this and its accompanying expedi- 
tion by sea to the Gulf of California, the combined 
equipment totalling a quarter million dollars of Ameri- 
can money of to-day. Coronado took two hundred and 



HISTORIC MONUMENTS 369 

sixty horsemen, sixty foot- soldiers, and more than a 
thousand Indians. Besides his pack-animals he led a 
thousand spare horses to carry home the loot. 

He sought the seven cities in Arizona and New- 
Mexico, and found the pueblo of Zuni, prosperous but 
lacking its expected hoard of gold ; he crossed Colorado 
in search of Quivira and found it in Kansas, a wretched 
habitation of a shiftless tribe; their houses straw, he 
reported, their clothes the hides of cows, meaning 
bison. He entered Nebraska in search of the broad 
river whose shores were lined with gold — the identical 
year, curiously, in which De Soto discovered the Missis- 
sippi. Many were the pueblos he visited and many 
his adventures and perils; but the only treasure he 
brought back was his record of exploration. 

This was the first of more than two centuries of 
Spanish expeditions. Fifty years after Coronado, the 
myth of Quivira was bom again; thereafter it wandered 
homeless, the inspiration of constant search, and final- 
ly settled in the ruins of the ancient pueblo of Tabira, 
or, as Bandeher has it, Teypana, New Mexico; the 
myth of the seven cities never wholly perished. 

It is not my purpose to follow the fascinating for- 
tunes of Spanish proselyting and conquest. I merely 
set the stage for the tableaux of the national monu- 
ments. 



370 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 



The Spaniards found our semiarid southwest 
dotted thinly with the pueblos and its canyons hung 
with the chff -dwellings of a large and fairly prosperous 
population of peace-loving Indians, who hunted the 
deer and the antelope, fished the rivers, and dry- 
farmed the mesas and valleys. Not so advanced in 
the arts of civilization as the people of the Mesa Verde, 
in Colorado, nevertheless their sense of form was pat- 
ent in their architecture, and their family life, govern- 
ment, and religion were highly organized. They were 
worshippers of the sun. Each pueblo and outlying 
village was a political unit. 

Let us first consider those national monuments 
which touch intimately the Spanish occupation. 

Gran Quivira National Monument 

Eighty miles southeast of Albuquerque, in the 
hollow of towering desert ranges, lies the arid country 
which Indian tradition calls the Accursed Lakes. 
Here, at the points of a large triangle, sprawl the ruins 
of three once flourishing pueblo cities, Abo, Cuaray, 
and Tabira. Once, says tradition, streams flowed into 
lakes inhabited by great fish, and the valleys bloomed; 
it was an unfaithful wife who brought down the curse 
of God. 

When the Spaniards came these cities were at the 
flood-tide of prosperity. Their combined population 



HISTORIC MONUMENTS 371 

was large. Tabird was chosen as the site of the mis- 
sion whose priests should trudge the long desert trails 
and minister to all. 

Undoubtedly, it was one of the most important of 
the early Spanish missions. The greater of the two 
churches was built of limestone, its outer walls six feet 
thick. It was a hundred and forty feet long and 
forty-eight feet wide. The present height of the walls 
is twenty-five feet. 

The ancient community building adjoining the 
church, the main pueblo of Tabird, has the outlines 
which are common to the prehistoric pueblos of the en- 
tire southwest and persist in general features in mod- 
em Indian architecture. The rooms are twelve to 
fifteen feet square, with ceilings eight or ten feet high. 
Doors connect the rooms, and the stories, of which 
there are three, are connected by ladders through trap- 
doors. It probably held a population of fifteen hun- 
dred. The pueblo has well stood the rack of time; 
the lesser buildings outside it have been reduced to 
mounds. 

The people who built and inhabited these cities of 
the Accursed Lakes were of the now extinct Piro stock. 
The towns were discovered in 1581 by Francisco 
Banchez de Chamuscado. The first priest assigned to 
the field was Fray Francisco de San Miguel, this in 
1 598. The mission of Tabird was founded by Francisco 
de Acevedo about 1628. The smaller church was 
built then; the great church was built in 1644, but 
was never fully finished. Between 1670 and 1675 ^-ll 



372 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

three native cities and their Spanish churches were 
wiped out by Apaches. 

Charles F. Lummis, from whom some of these 
historical facts are quoted, has been at great pains to 
trace the wanderings of the Quivira myth. Bandelier 
mentions an ancient New Mexican Indian called Tio 
Juan Largo, who told a Spanish explorer about the 
middle of the eighteenth century that Quivira was 
Tabira. Otherwise history is silent concerning the 
process by which the myth finally settled upon that 
historic city, far indeed from its authentic home in 
what now is Kansas. The fact stands, however, that 
as late as the latter half of the eighteenth century the 
name Tabira appeared on the ofiicial map of New Mex- 
ico. When and how this name was lost and the 
famous ruined city with its Spanish churches accepted 
as Gran Quivira perhaps never will be definitely known. 

"Mid-ocean is not more lonesome than the plains, 
nor night so gloomy as that dumb sunlight," wrote 
Lummis in 1893, approaching the Gran Quivira across 
the desert. "The brown grass is knee-deep, and even 
this shock gives a surprise in this hoof -obliterated land. 
The bands of antelope that drift, like cloud shadows, 
across the dun landscape suggest less of life than of the 
supernatural. The spell of the plains is a wondrous 
thing. At first it fascinates. Then it bewilders. At 
last it crushes. It is intangible but resistless; strong- 
er than hope, reason, will — stronger than humanity. 
When one cannot otherwise escape the plains, one 
takes refuge in madness," 



HISTORIC MONUMENTS 373 

This is the setting of the "ghost city" of ''ashen 
hues," that "wraith in pallid stone," the Gran Quivira. 

El Morro National Monument 

Due west from Albuquerque, New Mexico, not 
far from the Arizona boundary, El Morro National 
Monument conserves a mesa end of striking beauty 
upon whose cliffs are graven many inscriptions cut in 
passing by the Spanish and American explorers of 
more than two centuries. It is a historical record of 
unique value, the only extant memoranda of several 
expeditions, an invaluable detail in the history of many. 
It has helped trace obscure courses and has established 
important departures. To the tourist it brings home, 
as nothing else can, the reaUzation of these grim ro- 
mances of other days. 

El Morro, the castle, is also called Inscription 
Rock. West of its steepled front, in the angle of a 
sharp bend in the mesa, is a large partly enclosed 
natural chamber, a refuge in storm. A spring here 
betrays the reason for El Morro's popularity among 
the explorers of a semidesert region. The old Zuni 
trail bent from its course to touch this spring. In- 
scriptions are also found near the spring and on the 
outer side of the mesa facing the Zuni Road. 

For those acquainted with the story of Spanish 
exploration this national monument will have unique 
interest. To all it imparts a fascinating sense of the 
romance of those early days with which the large body 
of Americans have yet to become familiar. The pop- 



374 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

ular story of this romantic period of American history, 
its poetry and its fiction remain to be written. 

The oldest inscription is dated February i8, 1526. 
The name of Juan de Onate, later founder of Santa 
Fe, is there under date of 1606, the year of his visit 
to the mouth of the Colorado River. One of the 
latest Spanish inscriptions is that of Don Diego de 
Vargas, who in 1692 reconquered the Indians who re- 
belled against Spanish authority in 1680. 

The reservation also includes several important 
community houses of great antiquity, one of which 
perches safely upon the very top of El Morro rock. 

Casa Grande National Monument 

In the far south of Arizona not many miles north 
of the boundary of Sonora, there stands, near the Gila 
River, the noble ruin which the Spaniards call Casa 
Grande, or Great House. It was a building of large 
size situated in a compound of outlying buildings en- 
closed in a rectangular wall; no less than three other 
similar compounds and four detached clan houses 
once stood in the near neighborhood. Evidently, in 
prehistoric days, this was an important centre of popu- 
lation; remains of an irrigation system are still visible. 

The builders of these prosperous communal dwell- 
ings were probably Pima Indians. The Indians living 
in the neighborhood to-day have traditions indicated 
by their own names for the Casa Grande, the Old 
House of the Chief and the Old House of Chief Morn- 
ing Green. "The Pima word for green and blue is the 




CASA (iRAXDE NATIONAL MONUMENT 




PREHISTORIC CAVE HOiMES IN THE BANDELIER NATIONAL MONUMENT 
The holes worn by erosion have been enlarged lor doors and windows 



HISTORIC MONUMENTS 375 

same," Doctor Fewkes writes me. "Russell trans- 
lates the old chief's name Morning Blue, which is the 
same as my Morning Green. I have no doubt Morn- 
ing Glow is also correct, no doubt nearer the Indian 
idea which refers to sun-god. This chief was the son 
of the Sun by a maid, as was also Tcuhu-Montezuma, 
a sun-god who, legends say, built Casa Grande." 

Whatever its origin, the community was already 
in ruins when the Spaniards first found it. Kino iden- 
tified it as the ruin which Fray Marcos saw in 1539 
and called Chichilticalli, and which Coronado passed 
in 1540. The early Spanish historians believed it an 
ancestral settlement of the Aztecs. 

Its formal discovery followed a century and a half 
later. Domingo Jironza Petriz de Cruzate, governor 
of Sonora, had directed his nephew. Lieutenant Juan 
Mateo Mange, to conduct a group of missionaries into 
the desert, where Mange heard rumors from the natives 
of a fine group of ruins on the banks of a river which 
flowed west. He reported this to Father Eusebio 
Francisco Kino, the fearless and famous Jesuit mis- 
sionary among the Indians from 1687 to 171 1; in No- 
vember, 1694, Kino searched for the ruins, found them, 
and said mass within the walls of the Casa Grande. 

This splendid ruin is built of a natural concrete 
called culeche. The external walls are rough, but are 
smoothly plastered within, showing the marks of hu- 
man hands. Two pairs of small holes in the walls 
opposite others in the central room have occasioned 
much speculation. Two look east and west; the others, 



376 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

also on opposite walls, look north and south. Some 
persons conjecture that observations were made through 
them of the solstices, and perhaps of some star, to 
establish the seasons for these primitive people. "The 
foundation for this unwarranted hypothesis," Doctor 
Fewkes writes, "is probably a statement in a manu- 
script by Father Font in 1775, that the 'Prince,' 
'chief of Casa Grande, looked through openings in 
the east and west walls 'on the sun as it rose and set, 
to salute it.' The openings should not be confused 
with smaller holes made in the walls for placing iron 
rods to support the walls by contractors when the ruin 
was repaired." 

TuMACACORi National Monument 

One of the best-preserved ruins of one of the finest 
missions which Spanish priests established in the des- 
ert of the extreme south of Arizona is protected under 
the name of the Tumacacori National Monument. It 
is fifty-seven miles south of Tucson, near the Mexican 
border. The outlying country probably possessed a 
large native population. 

The ruins are most impressive, consisting of the 
walls and tower of an old church building, the walls 
of a mortuary chapel at the north end of the church, 
and a surrounding court with adobe walls six feet high. 
These, like all the Spanish missions, were built by In- 
dian converts under the direction of priests, for the 
Spanish invaders performed no manual labor. The 
walls of the church are six feet thick and plastered 




TLMACACORI MISSION 




From J pholoiirdpli l\ T. H. Hale 



MOXTEZLMA CASTLE 



HISTORIC MONUMENTS 377 

within. The belfry and the altar-dome are of burned 
brick, the only example of brick construction among 
the early Spanish missions. There is a fine arched 
doorway. 

For many reasons, this splendid church is well 
worth a visit. It was founded and built about 1688 
by Father Eusebio Francisco Kino, and was known as 
the Mission San Cayetano de Tumacacori. About 
1769 the Franciscans assumed charge, and repaired 
and elaborated the structure. They maintained it for 
about sixty years, until the Apache Indians laid siege 
and finally captured it, driving out the priests and dis- 
persing the Papagos. About 1850 it was found by 
Americans in its present condition. 

Navajo National Monument 

The boundary-line which divides Utah from Ari- 
zona divides the most gorgeous expression of the great 
American desert region. From the Mesa Verde Na- 
tional Park on the east to Zion National Monument on 
the west, from the Natural Bridges on the north to 
the Grand Canyon and the Painted Desert on the 
south, the country glows with golden sands and crim- 
son mesas, a wilderness of amazing and impossible 
contours and indescribable charm. 

Within this region, in the extreme north of Ari- 
zona, lie the ruins of three neighboring pueblos. Rich- 
ard Wetherill, who was one of the discoverers of the 
famous cliff-cities of the Mesa Verde, was one of the 
party which found the Kit Siel (Broken Pottery) ruin 



378 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

in 1894 within a long crescent- shaped cave in the 
side of a glowing red sandstone cliff; in 1908, upon 
information given by a Navajo Indian, John Wetherill, 
Professor Byron Gumming, and Neil Judd located Be- 
tatakin (Hillside House) ruin within a crescent-shaped 
cavity in the side of a small red canyon. Twenty 
miles west of Betatakin is a small ruin known as In- 
scription House upon whose walls is a carved inscrip- 
tion supposed to have been made by Spanish explorers 
who visited them in 1661. 

While these ruins show no features materially 
differing from those of hundreds of other more accessi- 
ble pueblo ruins, they possess quite extraordinary 
beauty because of their romantic location in cliffs of 
striking color in a region of mysterious charm. 

II 

But the Indian civilization of our southwest be- 
gan very many centuries before the arrival of the 
Spaniard, who found, besides the innumerable pueblos 
which were crowded with busy occupants, hundreds 
of pueblos which had been deserted by their builders, 
some of them for centuries, and which lay even then 
in ruins. 

The desertion of so many pueblos with abundant 
pottery and other evidences of active living is one of 
the mysteries of this prehistoric civilization. No doubt, 
with the failure of water-supplies and other changing 
physical conditions, occasionally communities sought 



HISTORIC MONUMENTS 379 

better living in other localities, but it is certain that 
many of these desertions resulted from the raids of 
the wandering predatory tribes of the plains, the 
Querechos of Bandelier's records, but usually mentioned 
by him and others by the modern name of Apaches. 
These fierce bands continually sought to possess them- 
selves of the stores of food and clothing to be found in 
the prosperous pueblos. The utmost cruelties of the 
Spanish invaders who, after all, were ruthless only in 
pursuit of gold, and, when this was lacking, tolerant 
and even kindly in their treatment of the natives, 
were nothing compared to the atrocities of these Apache 
Indians, who gloried in conquest. 

Of the ruins of pueblos which were not identified 
with Spanish occupation, six have been conserved as 
national monuments. 

The Bandelier National Monument 

Many centuries before the coming of the Spaniards, 
a deep gorge on the eastern slope of the Sierra de los 
Valles, eighteen miles west of Santa Fe, New Mexico, 
was the home of a people living in caves which they 
hollowed by enlarging erosional openings in the soft 
volcanic sides of nearly perpendicular cHffs. The 
work was done with pains and skill. A small entrance, 
sometimes from the valley floor, sometimes reached 
by ladder, opened into a roomy apartment which in 
many cases consisted of several connecting rooms. 
These apartments were set in tiers or stories, as in a 
modem flat-house. There were often two, sometimes 



38o THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

three, floors. They occurred in groups, probably rep- 
resenting families or clans, and some of these groups 
numbered hundreds. Seen to-day, the cliff-side sug- 
gests not so much the modern apartment-house, of 
which it was in a way the prehistoric prototype, as a 
gigantic pigeon-house. 

In time these Indians emerged from the cHff and 
built a great semicircular pueblo up the valley, sur- 
rounded by smaller habitations. Other pueblos, prob- 
ably still later in origin, were built upon surrounding 
mesas. All these habitations were abandoned perhaps 
centuries before the coming of the Spaniards. The 
gorge is known as the Rito de la Frijoles, which is the 
Spanish name of the clear mountain-stream which 
flows through it. Since 191 6 it has been known as the 
Bandelier National Monument, after the late Adolf 
Francis Bandelier, the distinguished archaeologist of 
the southwest. 

The valley is a place of beauty. It is six miles 
long and nowhere broader than half a mile; its entrance 
scarcely admits two persons abreast. Its southern 
wall is the slope of a tumbled mesa, its northern wall 
the vertical cliff of white and yellowish pumice in which 
the caves were dug. The walls rise in crags and pin- 
nacles many hundreds of feet. Willows, cottonwoods, 
cherries, and elders grow in thickets along the stream- 
side, and cactus decorates the wastes. It is reached 
by automobile from Santa Fe. 

This national monument lies within a large irregu- 
lar area which has been suggested for a national park be- 



HISTORIC MONUMENTS 381 

cause of the many interesting remains which it encloses. 
The Cliff Cities National Park, when it finally comes 
into existence, will include among its exhibits a con- 
siderable group of prehistoric shrines of great value and 
unusual popular interest. 

"The Indians of to-day," writes William Boone 
Douglass, "guard with great tenacity the secrets of 
their shrines. Even when the locations have been 
found they wiU deny their existence, plead ignorance 
of their meaning, or refuse to discuss the subject in 
any form." Nevertheless, they claim direct descent 
from the prehistoric shrine-builders, many of whose 
shrines are here found among others of later origin. 

Chaco Canyon National Monument 

For fourteen miles, both sides of a New Mexican 
canyon sixty-five miles equidistant from Farmington 
and Gallup are lined with the ruins of very large and 
prosperous colonies of prehistoric people. Most of 
the buildings were pueblos, many of them containing 
between fifty and a hundred rooms; one, known to-day 
as Pueblo Bonito, must have contained twelve hun- 
dred rooms. 

These ruins lie in their original desolation; little 
excavation, and no restoration has yet been done. 
Chaco Canyon must have been the centre of a very 
large population. For miles in all directions, par- 
ticularly westward, pueblos are grouped as suburbs 
group near cities of to-day. 

It is not surprising that so populous a desert neigh- 



382 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

borhood required extensive systems of irrigation. One 
of these is so well preserved that little more than the 
repair of a dam would be necessary to make it again 
efifective. 

Montezuma Castle National Monument 

Small though it is, Montezuma Castle is justly 
one of the most celebrated prehistoric ruins in America. 
Its charming proportions, and particularly its com- 
manding position in the face of a lofty precipice, make 
it a spectacle never to be forgotten. It is fifty-four 
miles from Prescott, Arizona. 

This structure was a communal house which orig- 
inally contained twenty-five rooms. The protection 
of the dry climate and of the shallow cave in which it 
stands has well preserved it these many centuries. 
Most of the rooms are in good condition. The timbers, 
which plainly show the hacking of the dull primeval 
stone axes, are among its most interesting exhibits. 
The building is crescent-shaped, sixty feet in width 
and about fifty feet high. It is five stories high, but 
the fifth story is invisible from the front because of 
the high stone wall of the fa^iade. The cliff forms the 
back wall of the structure. 

Montezuma's Castle is extremely old. Its ma- 
terial is soft calcareous stone, and nothing but its shel- 
tered position could have preserved it. There are 
many ruined dwellings in the neighborhood. 



HISTORIC MONUMENTS 383 

ToNTO National Monument 

Four miles east of the Roosevelt Dam and eighty 
miles east of Phoenix, Arizona, are two small groups 
of cliff-dwellings which together form the Tonto Na- 
tional Monument. The southern group occupies a 
cliff cavern a hundred and twenty-five feet across. 
The masonry is above the average. The ceilings of 
the lower rooms are constructed of logs laid length- 
wise, upon which a layer of fibre serves as the founda- 
tion for the four-inch adobe floor of the chamber 
overhead. 

There are hundreds of cliff-dwelHngs which ex- 
ceed this in charm and interest, but its nearness to an 
attraction like the Roosevelt Dam and glimpses of 
it which the traveller catches as he speeds over the 
Apache Trail make it invaluable as a tourist exhibit. 
Thousands who are unable to undertake the long and 
often arduous journeys by trail to the greater ruins, 
can here get definite ideas and a hint of the real flavor 
of prehistoric civihzation in America. 

Walnut Canyon National Monument 

Thirty cHff-dwellings cling to the sides of pic- 
turesque Walnut Canyon, eight miles from Flagstaff, 
Arizona. They are excellently preserved. The largest 
contains eight rooms. The canyon possesses unusual 
beauty because of the thickets of locust which fringe 
the trail down from the rim. One climbs down lad- 
ders to occasional ruins which otherwise are inacces- 



384 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

sible. Because of its nearness to Flagstaff several 
thousand persons visit this reservation yearly. 

Gila Cliffs National Monument 

Fifty miles northeast of Silver City, New Mexico, 
a deep rough canyon in the west fork of the Gila River 
contains a group of four cliff-dwellings in a fair state 
of preservation. They lie in cavities in the base of 
an overhanging cliff of grayish-yellow volcanic rock 
which at one time apparently were closed by protect- 
ing walls. When discovered by prospectors and 
hunters about 1870, many sandals, baskets, spears, 
and cooking utensils were found strewn on the floors. 
Corn-cobs are all that vandals have left. 



XIX 

DESERT SPECTACLES 

THE American desert, to eyes attuned, is charged 
^^dth beauty. Few who see it from the car-win- 
dow find it attractive; most travellers quickly lose in- 
terest in its repetitions and turn back to their novels. 
A little intimacy changes this attitude. Live a httle 
with the desert. See it in its varied moods — for every 
hour it changes; see it at sunrise, at midday, at sun- 
set, in the ghostly night, by moonlight. Observe its 
life — for it is full of life; its amazing vegetation; its 
varied outline. Drink in its atmosphere, its history, 
its tradition, its romance. Open your soul to its per- 
suading spirit. Then, insensibly but swiftly, its flavor 
will enthrall your senses; it will possess you. And 
once possessed, you are charmed for life. It will call 
you again and again, as the sea calls the sailor and the 
East its devotees. 

This alluring region is represented in our national 
parks system by reservations which display its range. 
The Zion National Monument, the Grand Canyon, and 
the Mesa Verde illustrate widely differing phases. 
The historical monuments convey a sense of its ro- 
mance. There remain a few to complete the gamut 
of its charms. 

38s 



386 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

The Rainbow Bridge National Monument 

Imagine a gray Navajo desert dotted with purple 
sage; huge mesas, deep red, squared against the gray- 
blue atmosphere of the horizon; pinnacles, spires, 
shapes like monstrous bloody fangs, springing from the 
sands; a floor as rough as stormy seas, heaped with 
tumbled rocks, red, yellow, blue, green, grayish-white, 
between which rise strange yellowish-green thorny 
growths, cactus-like and unfamiliar; a pathless waste, 
strewn with obsidian fragments, glaring in the noon 
sun, more confusing than the crooked mazes of an an- 
cient Oriental city. 

Imagine shapeless masses of colored sandstone, 
unclimbable, barring the way; acres of polished mot- 
tled rock tilted at angles which defy crossing; unex- 
pected canyons whose deep, broken, red and yellow 
precipices force long detours. 

And everywhere color, color, color. It pervades 
the glowing floor, the uprising edifices. The very air 
palpitates with color, insistent, irresistible, indefinable. 

This is the setting of the Rainbow Bridge. 

Scarcely more than a hundred persons besides 
Indians, they tell me, have seen this most entrancing 
spectacle, perhaps, of all America. The way in is 
long and difficult. There are only two or three who 
know it, even of those who have been there more than 
once, and the region has no inhabitants to point direc- 
tions among the confusing rocks. There is no water, 
nor any friendly tree. 




r^MiitM^ 








KOOSE\ELT PARTY IN MONUMENT VALLEY 




RAINBOW BRIDGE IN KULL PERSPECTIVE 



DESERT SPECTACLES 387 

The day's ride is wearying in the extreme in spite 
of its fascinations. The objective is Navajo Moun- 
tain, which, strange spectacle in this desert waste, is 
forested to its summit with yellow pine above a sur- 
rounding belt of juniper and pinyon, with aspen and 
willows, wild roses, Indian paint-brush, primrose, and 
clematis in its lower valleys. Below, the multicolored 
desert, deep cut with the canyons which carry off the 
many little rivers. 

Down one of these wild and highly colored desert 
canyons among whose vivid tumbled rocks your horses 
pick their course with difficulty, you suddenly see a 
rainbow caught among the vivid bald rocks, a slender 
arch so deliciously proportioned, so gracefully curved 
among its sharp surroundings, that your eye fLxes it 
steadfastly and your heart bounds with relief; until 
now you had not noticed the oppression of this angled, 
spine-carpeted landscape. 

From now on nothing else possesses you. The 
eccentricity of the going constantly hides it, and each 
reappearance brings again the joy of discovery. And 
at last you reach it, dismount beside the small clear 
stream which flows beneath it, approach reverently, 
overwhelmed with a strange mingling of awe and 
great elation. You stand beneath its enormous en- 
circHng red and yellow arch and perceive that it is 
the support which holds up the sky. It is long before 
turbulent emotion permits the mind to analyze the 
elements which compose its extraordinary beauty. 

Dimensions mean little before spectacles like this. 



388 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

To know that the span is two hundred and seventy- 
eight feet may help realization at home, where it may 
be laid out, staked and looked at; it exceeds a block 
of Fifth Avenue in New York. To know that the 
apex of the rainbow's curve is three hundred and nine 
feet above your wondering eyes means nothing to you 
there; but to those who know New York City it means 
the height of the Flatiron Building built three stories 
higher. Choose a building of equal height in your 
own city, stand beside it and look up. Then imagine 
it a gigantic monolithic arch of entrancing proportions 
and fascinating curve, glowing in reds and yellows 
which merge into each other insensibly and without 
form or pattern. Imagine this fairy unreality out- 
lined, not against the murk which overUes cities, but 
against a sky of desert clarity and color. 

All natural bridges are created wholly by erosion. 
This was carved from an outstanding spur of Navajo 
sandstone which lay crosswise of the canyon. Orig- 
inally the stream struck full against this barrier, swung 
sideways, and found its way around the spur's free 
outer edge. The end was merely a matter of time. 
Gradually but surely the stream, sand-laden in times of 
flood, wore an ever-deepening hollow in the barrier. 
Finally it wore it through and passed under what then 
became a bridge. But meantime other agencies were 
at work. The rocky wall above, alternately hot and 
cold, as happens in high arid lands, detached curved, 
flattened plates. Worn below by the stream, thinned 
above by the destructive processes of wind and tern- 



DESERT SPECTACLES 389 

perature, the window enlarged. In time the Rainbow 
Bridge evolved in all its glorious beauty. Not far away 
is another natural bridge well advanced in the making. 

The Rainbow Bridge was discovered In 1909 by 
Wilham Boone Douglass, Examiner of Surveys in the 
General Land Office, Santa Fe. Following is an ab- 
stract of the government report covering the discovery: 

"The information had come to Mr. Douglass 
from a Paiute Indian, Mike's Boy, who later took the 
name of Jim, employed as flagman in the survey of 
the three great natural bridges of White Canyon. 
Seeing the white man's appreciation of this form of 
wind and water erosion, Jim told of a greater bridge 
known only to himself and one other Indian, located on 
the north side of the Navajo Mountain, in the Paiute 
Indian reservation. Bending a twig of willow in 
rainbow-shape, with its ends stuck in the ground, Jim 
showed what his bridge looked like. 

"An effort was made to reach the bridge in De- 
cember. Unfortunately Jim could not be located. 
On reaching the Navajo trading-post, Oljato, nothing 
was known of such a bridge, and the truth of Jim's 
statement was questioned. 

"The trip was abandoned until August of the 
following year, when Mr. Douglass organized a second 
party at Bluff, Utah, and under Jim's guidance, left 
for the bridge. At Oljato the party was augmented 
by Professor Cummings, and a party of college stu- 
dents, with John Wetherill as packer, who were ex- 
cavating ruins in the Navajo Indian Reservation. As 



390 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

the uninhabited and unknown country of the bridge 
was reached, travel became almost impossible. All 
equipment, save what was absolutely indispensable, 
was discarded. The whole country was a maze of 
box canyons, as though some turbulent sea had sud- 
denly solidified in rock. Only at a few favored points 
could the canyon walls be scaled even by man, and still 
fewer where a horse might clamber. In the sloping 
sandstone ledges footholds for the horses must be cut, 
and even then they fell, until their loss seemed certain. 
After many adventures the party arrived at 1 1 o'clock, 
A. M., August 14, 1909. 

"Jim had indeed made good. Silhouetted against 
a turquoise sky was an arch of rainbow shape, so deli- 
cately proportioned that it seemed as if some great 
sculptor had hewn it from the rock. Its span of 270 
feet bridged a stream of clear, sparkling water, that 
flowed 310 feet below its crest. The world's greatest 
natural bridge had been found as Jim had described it. 
Beneath it, an ancient altar bore witness to the fact 
that it was a sacred shrine of those archaic people, 
the builders of the weird and mysterious cliff-castles 
seen in the Navajo National Monument. 

"The crest of the bridge was reached by Mr. 
Douglass and his three assistants, John R. English, 
Jean F. Rogerson, and Daniel Perkins, by lowering 
themselves with ropes to the south abutment, and 
chmbing its arch. Probably they were the first human 
beings to reach it. 

"No Indian name for the bridge was known, ex- 



DESERT SPECTACLES 391 

cept such descriptive generic terms as the Paiute *The 
space under a horse's belly between its fore and hind 
legs/ or the 'Hole in the rock' (nonnezoshi) of the 
Navajo, neither of which was deemed appropriate. 
While the question of a name was still being debated, 
there appeared in the sky, as if in answer, a beautiful 
rainbow, the 'Barahoni' of the Paiutes. 

"The suitability of the name was further demon- 
strated by a superstition of the Navajos. On the occa- 
sion of his second visit, the fall of the same year, Mr. 
Douglass had as an assistant an old Navajo Indian 
named White Horse, who, after passing under the 
bridge, would not return, but cKmbed laboriously 
around its end. On being pressed for an explanation, 
he would arch his hand, and through it squint at the 
sun, solemnly shaking his head. Later, through the 
assistance of Mrs. John Wetherill, an experienced 
Navajo linguist, Mr. Douglass learned that the forma- 
tions of the type of the bridge were symbolic rainbows, 
or the sun's path, and one passing under could not re- 
turn, under penalty of death, without the utterance 
of a certain prayer, which White Horse had forgotten. 
The aged Navajo informant would not reveal the 
prayer for fear of the 'Lightning Snake.'" 

If your return from Rainbow Bridge carries you 
through Monument Valley with its miles of blazing 
red structures, memory will file still another amazing 
sensation. Some of its crimson monsters rise a thou- 
sand feet above the grassy plain. 



392 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

Natural Bridges National Monument 

Not many miles north of the Rainbow Bridge, 
fifty miles from Monticello in southern Utah, in a 
region not greatly dissimilar in outline, and only less 
colorful, three natural bridges of large size have been 
conserved under the title of the Natural Bridges Na- 
tional Monument. Here, west of the Mesa Verde, 
the country is characterized by long, broad mesas, 
sometimes crowned with stunted cedar forests, drop- 
ping suddenly into deep valleys. The erosion of many 
thousands of centuries has ploughed the surface into 
winding rock-strewn canyons, great and small. Three 
of these canyons are crossed by bridges stream-cut 
through the solid rock. 

The largest, locally known as the Augusta Bridge, 
is named Sipapu, Gate of Heaven. It is one of the 
largest natural bridges in the world, measuring two 
hundred and twenty-two feet in height, with a span of 
two hundred and sixty-one feet. It is a graceful and 
majestic structure, so proportioned and finished that 
it is difficult, from some points of view, to believe it 
the unplanned work of natural forces. One crosses it 
on a level platform twenty-eight feet wide. 

The other two, which are nearly its size, are found 
within five miles. The Kachina, which means Guar- 
dian Spirit, is locally called the Caroline Bridge. The 
Owachomo, meaning Rock Mound, is locally known 
as the Edwin Bridge. The local names celebrate per- 
sons who visited them soon after they were first dis- 
covered by Emery Knowles in 1895. 



DESERT SPECTACLES 393 

They may be reached by horse and pack-train 
from Monticello, or BkifT, Utah. One of the five sec- 
tions of the reservation conserves two large caves. 

Dinosaur National Monument 

The Age of Reptile developed a wide variety of 
monsters in the central regions of the continent from 
Montana to the Gulf of Mexico. The dinosaurs of 
the Triassic and Jurassic periods sometimes had gi- 
gantic size, the Brontosaurus attaining a length of 
sixty feet or more. The femur of the Brachiosaurus 
exceeded six feet; this must have been the greatest of 
them all. 

The greater dinosaurs were herbivorous. The 
carnivorous species were not remarkable for size; 
there were small leaping forms scarcely larger than 
rabbits. The necessity for defense against the flesh- 
eaters developed, in the smaller dinosaurs, extremely 
heavy armor. The stegosaur carried huge plates upon 
his curved back, suggesting a circular saw; his long 
powerful tail was armed with sharp spikes, and must 
have been a dangerous weapon. Dinosaurs roamed 
all over what is now called our middle west. 

In those days the central part of our land was 
warm and swampy. Fresh-water lagoons and slug- 
gish streams were bordered by low forests of palms 
and ferns; one must go to the tropics to find a corre- 
sponding landscape in our times. The waters abounded 
in reptiles and fish. Huge winged reptiles flew from 
cover to cover. The first birds were evolving from 
reptilian forms. 



394 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

The absorbing story of these times is written in 
the rocks. The life forms were at their full when the 
sands were laid which to-day is the wide-spread layer 
of sandstone which geologists call the Morrison forma- 
tion. Erosion has exposed this sandstone in several 
parts of the western United States, and many have 
been the uiteresting glimpses it has afforded of that 
strange period so many millions of years ago. 

In the Uintah Basin of northwestern Utah, a region 
of bad lands crossed by the Green River on its way to 
the Colorado and the Grand Canyon, the Morrison 
strata have been bent upward at an angle of sixty 
degrees or more and then cut through, exposing their 
entire depth. The country is extremely rough and 
bare. Only in occasional widely separated bottoms 
has irrigation made farming possible; elsewhere nothing 
grows upon the bald hillsides. 

Here, eighteen miles east of the town of Vernal, 
eighty acres of the exposed Morrison strata were set 
aside in 191 5 as the Dinosaur National Monument. 
These acres have already yielded a very large collec- 
tion of skeletons. Since 1908 the Carnegie Museum 
of Pittsburgh has been gathering specimens of the 
greatest importance. The only complete skeleton of 
a dinosaur ever found was taken out in 1909. The 
work of quarrying and removal is done with the ut- 
most care. The rock is chiselled away in thin layers, 
as no one can tell when an invaluable relic may be 
found. As fast as bones are detached, they are cov- 
ered with plaster of Paris and so wrapped that break- 



DESERT SPECTACLES 395 

age becomes impossible. Two years were required to 
unearth the skeleton of a brontosaurus. 

The extraordinary massing of fossil remains at 
this point suggests that floods may have swept these 
animals from a large area and lodged their bodies here, 
where they were covered with sands. But it also is 
possible that this spot was merely a favorite feeding- 
ground. It may be that similarly rich deposits lie 
hidden in many places in the wide-spread Morrison 
sandstone which some day may be unearthed. The 
bones of dinosaurs have been found in the Morrison 
of Colorado near Boulder. 

Petrified Forest National Monument 

For a hundred and twenty-five or thirty miles 
southwest of the Grand Canyon, the valley of the 
Little Colorado River is known as the Painted Desert. 
It is a narrow plain of Carboniferous and Triassic 
marls, shales, sandstones, and conglomerates, abound- 
ing in fossils, the most arid part of Arizona; even the 
river's lower reaches dry up for a part of each year. 
But it is a palette of brilliant colors; it will be difiicult 
to name a tint or shade which is not vividly represented 
in this gaudy floor and in the strata of the cliffs which 
define its northern and eastern limits. Above and be- 
yond these cHffs lies that other amazing desert, the 
Navajo country, the land of the Rainbow Bridge and 
the Canyon de Chelly. 

I have mentioned the Painted Desert because it 
is shaped like a long narrow finger pointed straight 



396 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

at the Petrified Forests lying just beyond its touch. 
Here the country is also highly colored, but very dif- 
ferently. Maroon and tawny yellow are the prevail- 
ing tints of the marls, red and brown the colors of the 
sandstones. There is a rolling sandy floor crisscrossed 
with canyons in whose bottoms grow stunted cedars 
and occasional cottonwoods. Upon this floor thou- 
sands of petrified logs are heaped in confusion. In 
many places the strong suggestion is that of a log jam 
left stranded by subsiding floods. Nearly all the logs 
have broken into short lengths as cleanly cut as if 
sawn, the result of succeeding heat and cold. 

Areas of petrified wood are common in many parts 
of the Navajo country and its surrounding deserts. 
The larger areas are marked on the Geological Survey 
maps, and many lesser areas are mentioned in reports. 
There are references to rooted stumps. The three 
groups in the Petrified Forest National Monument, 
near the town of Adamana, Arizona, were chosen for 
conservation because they are the largest and perhaps 
the finest; at the time, the gorgeously colored logs 
were being carried away in quantities to be cut up into 
table-tops. 

As a matter of fact, these are not forests. Most 
of these trees grew upon levels seven hundred feet or 
more higher than where they now lie and at unknown 
distances; floods left them here. 

The First Forest, which lies six miles south of 
Adamana, contains thousands of broken lengths. 
One unbroken log a hundred and eleven feet long 



^9^ 









,i- 




^.yz.jt V :: 



THE PETRIFIED FOREST OF ARIZONA 

Showing the formation in colored strata. The logs seen on the ground grew upon a le\cl seven 

hundred feet higher 




PETRIFIED TRUNK FORMING A BRIDGE OVER A CANVON 
The trunk is in feet long. The stone piers were built to preserve it 



DESERT SPECTACLES 397 

bridges a canyon forty-five feet wide, a remarkable 
spectacle. In the Second Forest, which lies two miles 
and a half south of that, and the Third Forest, which 
is thirteen miles south of Adamana and eighteen miles 
southeast of Holbrook, most of the trunks appear to 
lie in their original positions. One which was mea- 
sured by Doctor G. H. Knowlton of the Smithsonian 
Institution was more than seven feet in diameter and 
a hundred and twenty feet long. He estimates the 
average diameters at three or four feet, while lengths 
vary from sixty to a hundred feet. 

The coloring of the wood is variegated and bril- 
liant. "The state of mineralization in which most of 
this wood exists," writes Professor Lester F. Ward, 
paleobotanist, "almost places them among the gems 
or precious stones. Not only are chalcedony, opals, 
and agates found among them, but many approach the 
condition of jasper and onyx." "The chemistry of 
the process of petrifaction or silicification," writes 
Doctor George P. Merrill, Curator of Geology in the 
National Museum, "is not quite clear. Silica is ordi- 
narily looked upon as one of the most insoluble of sub- 
stances. It is nevertheless readily soluble in alkaline 
solutions — i. e., solutions containing soda or potash. 
It is probable that the solutions permeating these 
buried logs were thus alkaline, and as the logs gradually 
decayed their organic matter was replaced, molecule 
by molecule, by silica. The brilliant red and other 
colors are due to the small amount of iron and man- 
ganese deposited together with the silica, and super- 



398 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

oxydized as the trunks are exposed to the air. The 
most brilHant colors are therefore to be found on the 
surface." 

The trees are of several species. All those identi- 
fied by Doctor Knowlton were Araucaria, which do not 
now live in the northern hemisphere. Doctor E. C. 
Jeffrey, of Harvard, has described one genus unknown 
elsewhere. 

To get the Petrified Forest into full prospective 
it is well to recall that these shales and sands were laid 
in water, above whose surface the land raised many 
times, only to sink again and accumulate new strata. 
The plateau now has fifty-seven hundred feet of alti- 
tude. 

"When it is known," writes Doctor Knowlton, 
"that since the close of Triassic times probably more 
than fifty thousand feet of sediments have been de- 
posited, it is seen that the age of the Triassic forests 
of Arizona can only be reckoned in millions of years 
— just how many it would be mere speculation to at- 
tempt to estimate. It is certain, also, that at one time 
the strata containing these petrified logs were them- 
selves buried beneath thousands of feet of strata of 
later ages, which have in places been worn away suffi- 
ciently to expose the tree-bearing beds. Undoubtedly 
other forests as great or greater than those now exposed 
lie buried beneath the later formations." 

A very interesting small forest, not in the reser- 
vation, lies nine miles north of Adamana. 



DESERT SPECTACLES 399 

Papago Saguaro National Monument 

The popular idea of a desert of dry drifting sand 
unrelieved except at occasional oases by evidences of 
life was born of our early geographies, which pictured 
the Sahara as the desert type. Far dififerent indeed 
is our American desert, most of which has a few inches 
of rainfall in the early spring and grows a peculiar 
flora of remarkable individuality and beauty. The 
creosote bush seen from the car-windows shelters a 
few grasses which brown and die by summer, but help 
to color the landscape the year around. Many low 
flowering plants gladden the desert springtime, and 
in the far south and particularly in the far southwest 
are several varieties of cactus which attain great size. 
The frequenter of the desert soon correlates its flora 
with its other scenic elements and finds all rich and 
beautiful. 

In southwestern Arizona and along the southern 
border of California this strange flora finds its fullest 
expression. Here one enters a new fairy-land, a region 
of stinging bushes and upstanding monsters lifting un- 
gainly arms to heaven. In 1914, to conserve one of 
the many rich tracts of desert flora. President Wilson 
created the Papago Saguaro National Monument a 
few miles east of Phoenix, Arizona. Its two thousand 
and fifty acres include fine examples of innumerable 
desert species in fullest development. 

Among these the cholla is at once one of the most 
fascinating and the most exasperating. It belongs 



400 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

to the prickly pear family, but there resemblance 
ceases. It is a stocky bush two or three feet high 
covered with balls of flattened powerful sharp-pointed 
needles which will penetrate even a heavy shoe. In 
November these fall, strewing the ground with spiny 
indestructible weapons. There are many varieties of 
choUas and all are decorative. The tree cholla grows 
from seven to ten feet in height, a splendid showy 
feature of the desert slopes, and the home, fortress, 
and sure defense for all the birds who can find nest- 
room behind its bristhng breastwork. 

The Cereus thurberi, the pipe-organ, or candela- 
brum cactus, as it is variously called, grows in thick 
straight columns often clumped closely together, a 
picturesque and beautiful creation. Groups range 
from a few inches to many feet in height. One clump 
of twenty-two stems has been reported, the largest 
stem of which was twenty feet high and twenty-two 
inches in diameter. 

Another of picturesque appeal is the bisnaga or 
barrel cactus, of which there are many species of many 
sizes. Like all cacti, it absorbs water during the brief 
wet season and stores it for future use. A specimen 
the size of a flour-barrel can be made to yield a couple 
of gallons of sweetish but refreshing water, whereby 
many a life has been saved in the sandy wastes. 

But the desert's chief exhibit is the giant saguaro, 
the Cereus giganteus, from which the reservation got 
its name. This stately cactus rises in a splendid green 
column, accordion-plaited and decorated with star- 



DESERT SPECTACLES 401 

like clusters of spines upon the edges of the plaits. 
The larger specimens grow as high as sixty or seventy 
feet and throw out at intervals powerful branches 
which bend sharply upward; sometimes there are as 
many as eight or nine of these gigantic branches. 

No towering fir or spreading oak carries a more 
princely air. A forest of giant saguaro rising from a 
painted desert far above the tangle of creosote-bush, 
mesquite, cholla, bisnaga, and scores of other strange 
growths of a land of strange attractions is a spectacle 
to stir the blood and to remember for a lifetime. 

Colorado National Monument 

On the desert border of far-western Colorado 
near Grand Junction is a region of red sandstone 
which the erosion of the ages has carved into innu- 
merable strange and grotesque shapes. Once a great 
plain, then a group of mesas, now it has become a city 
of grotesque monuments. Those who have seen the 
Garden of the Gods near Colorado Springs can imagine 
it multiplied many times in size, grotesqueness, com- 
plexity, and area; such a vision will approximate the 
Colorado National IMonument. The two regions have 
other relations in common, for as the Garden of the 
Gods flanks the Rockies' eastern slopes and looks east- 
ward to the great plains, so does the Colorado National 
Monument flank the Rockies' western desert. Both 
are the disclosure by erosion of similar strata of red 
sandstone which may have been more or less con- 



402 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

tinuous before the great Rockies wrinkled, lifted, and 
burst upward between them. 

The rock monuments of this group are extremely 
highly cplored. They rise in several neighboring can- 
yons and some of them are of great height and fan- 
tastic design. One is a nearly circular column with a 
diameter of a hundred feet at the base and a height 
of more than four hundred feet. 

Caves add to the attractions, and there are many 
springs among the tangled growths of the canyon floors. 
There are cedars and pinyon trees. The region abounds 
in mule-deer and other wild animals. 

Capulin Mountain National Monument 

After the sea-bottom which is now our desert 
southwest rose for the last time and became the lofty 
plateau of to-day, many were the changes by which its 
surface became modified. Chief of these was the 
erosion which has washed its levels thousands of feet 
below its potential altitude and carved it so remark- 
ably. But it also became a field of wide-spread vol- 
canic activity, and lavas and obsidians are constantly 
encountered among its gravels, sands, and shales. 
Many also are the cones of dead volcanoes. 

Capulin Mountain in northeastern New Mexico 
near the Colorado line is a very ancient volcano which 
retains its shape in nearly perfect condition. It was 
made a national monument for scientific reasons, but 
it also happily rounds out the national parks' exhibit 
of the influences which created our wonderful south- 



DESERT SPECTACLES 403 

west. Its crater cone is composed partly of lava flow, 
partly of fine loose cinder, and partly of cemented vol- 
canic ash. It is nearly a perfect cone. 

Capulin rises fifteen hundred feet from the plain 
to an altitude of eight thousand feet. Its crater is 
fifteen hundred feet across and seventy-five feet deep. 
To complete the volcanic exhibit many blister cones 
are found around its base. It is easily reached from 
two railroads or by automobile. 



XX 

THE MUIR WOODS AND OTHER NATIONAL 
MONUMENTS 

NATIONAL monuments which commemorate his- 
tory, conserve forests, and distinguish conspicu- 
ous examples of world-making dot other parts of the 
United States besides the colorful southwest. Their 
variety is great and the natural beauty of some of them 
unsurpassed. 

Their number should be much greater. Every 
history-helping exploration of the early days, from 
Cortreal's inspection of the upper Atlantic coast in 
1 501 and Ponce de Leon's exploration of Florida 
eleven years later, from Cabrillo's skirting of the 
Pacific coast in 1542 and Vancouver's entrance into 
Puget Sound in 1792, including every early expedition 
from north and south into the country now ours and 
every exploration of the interior by our own people, 
should be commemorated, not by a slab of bronze or 
marble, but by a striking and appropriate area set 
apart as a definite memorial of the history of this 
nation's early beginnings. 

These areas should be appropriately located upon 
or overlooking some important or characteristic land- 
mark of the explorations or events which they com- 
memorated, and should have scenic importance suffi- 

404 



THE MUIR WOODS 405 

cient to attract visitors and impress upon them the 
stages of the progress of this land from a condition of 
wilderness to settlement and civilization. 

Nor should it end here. The country is richly en- 
dowed, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, with exam- 
ples of Nature's amazing handicraft in the making of 
this continent, the whole range of which should be 
fully expressed in national reservations. 

Besides these, examples of our northeastern for- 
ests, the pines of the southern Appalachians, the ever- 
glades of Florida, the tangled woodlands of the gulf, 
and other typical forests which perchance may have 
escaped the desolation of civilization, should be added 
to the splendid forest reserves of the national parks of 
the West, first-grown as Nature made them, forever to 
remain untouched by the axe. 

Thus will the national parks system become the 
real national museum for to-day and forever. 

There follows a brief catalogue of the slender and 
altogether fortuitous beginnings of such an exhibit. 

MuiR Woods National Monument 

One of the last remaining stands of original red- 
wood forest easily accessible to the visitor is the Muir 
Woods in California. It occupies a picturesque canyon 
on the slope of Mount Tamalpais, north of the Golden 
Gate and opposite San Francisco, from which it is 
comfortably reached by ferry and railroad. It was 
rescued from the axe by WilHam Kent of California, 
who, jointly with Mrs. Kent, gave it to the nation as 



4o6 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

an exhibit of the splendid forest which once crowded 
the shores of San Francisco Bay. It is named after 
John Muir, to whom this grove was a favorite retreat 
for many years. 

It exhibits many noble specimens of the California 
redwood, Sequoia sempervirens, cousin of the giant 
sequoia. Some of them attain a height of three hun- 
dred feet, with a diameter exceeding eighteen feet. 
They stand usually in clusters, or family groups, their 
stems erect as pillars, their crowns joined in a lofty 
roof, rustling in the Pacific winds, musical with the 
songs of birds. Not even in the giant sequoia groves 
of the Sierra have I found any spot more cathedral- 
like than this. Its floor is brown and sweet-smelling, 
its aisles outlined by the tread of generations of wor- 
shippers. Its naves, transepts, alcoves, and sanctu- 
aries are still and dim, yet filled mysteriously with 
light. 

The Muir Woods is a grove of noble redwoods, 
but it is much more. Apart from its main passages, 
in alcove, gateway, and outlying precinct it is an ex- 
hibit of the rich Calif ornian coast forest. The Douglas 
fir here reaches stately proportions. Many of the 
western oaks display their manifold picturesqueness. 
A hundred lesser trees and shrubs add their grace and 
variety. The forest is typical and complete. Though 
small in scope it is not a remnant but naturally blends 
into its surroundings. The shaded north hill slopes 
carry the great trees to the ridge line; the southern 
slope exhibits the struggle for precedence with the 




From a photograph hy Tihbills 

CATHEDRAL ISLE OF THE MUIR WOODS 



THE MUIR WOODS 407 

mountain shrubs. At the lower end one bursts out 
into the grass country and the open hills. Every 
feature of the loveliest of all forests is at hand: the 
valley floor with its miniature trout-stream overhung 
with fragrant azaleas; the brown carpet interwoven 
with azaleas and violets. There is the cool decoration 
of many ferns. 

The straight-growing redwoods compel a change 
of habit in the trees that would struggle toward a view 
of the sky. Mountain-oaks and madrona are straight- 
trunked and clear of lower branches. There is rivalry 
of the strong and protection for the weak. 

The grove is, in truth, a complete expression in 
little of Nature's forest plan. The characteristics of 
the greater redwood forests which require weeks or 
months to compass and careful correlation to bring 
into perspective, here are exhibited within the rambling 
of a day. The Muir Woods is an entity. Its meadow 
borders, its dark ravines, its valley floor, its slopes and 
hilltops, all show fullest luxuriance and perfect pro- 
portion. The struggle of the greater trees to climb the 
hills is exemphfied as fully as in the great exhibits 
of the north, which spread over many mfles of hill 
slope; here one may see its range in half an hour. 

The coloring, too, is rich. The rusty foliage and 
bark, the brighter green of the shrubs, the brown car- 
pet, the opal light, stirs the spirit. The powerful in- 
dividuality of many of its trees is the source of never- 
ending pleasure. There is a redwood upon the West 
Fork which has no living base, but feeds, vampire- 



4o8 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

like, through another's veins; or, if you prefer the 
figure of family dependence so strikingly exempHfied 
in these woods, has been rescued from destruction by 
a brother. The base of this tree has been completely 
girdled by fire. Impossible to draw subsistence from 
below, it stands up from a burned, naked, slender 
foundation. But another tree fell against it twenty- ' 
five or thirty feet above the ground, in some far past 
storm, and lost its top; this tree pours its sap into the 
veins of the other to support its noble top. The twin 
cripples have become a single healthy tree. 

One of the most striking exhibits of the Muir 
Woods is its tangle of California laurel. Even in its 
deepest recesses, the bays, as they are commonly 
called, reach great size. They sprawl in all directions, 
bend at sharp angles, make great loops to enter the 
soil and root again; sometimes they cross each other 
and join their trunks; in one instance, at least, a large 
crownless trunk has bent and entered head first the 
stem of still a larger tree. 

There are greater stands of virgin redwoods in 
the northern wilderness of California which the ruth- 
less lumberman has not yet reached but is approaching 
fast; these are inland stands of giants, crowded like 
battalions. But there is no other Muir Woods, with 
its miniature perfection. 

Devil's Postpile National Monument 

Southeast of craggy Lyell, mountain climax and 
eastern outpost of the Yosemite National Park, the 



THE MUIR WOODS 409 

Muir Trail follows the extravagantly beautiful begin- 
nings of the Middle Fork of the San Joaquin River 
through a region of myriad waters and snow-flecked 
mountains. Banner Peak, Ritter Mountain, Thou- 
sand Island Lake, Volcanic Ridge, Shadow Lake — 
national park scenery in its noblest expression, but not 
yet national park. 

A score of miles from Lyell, the trail follows the 
river into a volcanic bottom from whose forest rises the 
splendid group of pentagonal basaltic columns which 
was made a national monument in 191 1 under the title 
of the Devil's Postpile. Those who know the famous 
Giant's Causeway of the Irish coast will know it in 
kind, but not in beauty. 

The enormous uplift which created the Sierra was 
accompanied on both its slopes by extensive volcanic 
eruptions, the remains of which are frequently visible 
to the traveller. The huge basaltic crystals of the 
Devil's Postpile were a product of this volcanic out- 
pouring; they formed deep within the hot masses 
which poured over the region for miles around. Their 
upper ends have become exposed by the erosion of the 
ages by which the cinder soil and softer rock around 
them have been worn away. 

The trail traveller comes suddenly upon this 
splendid group. It is elevated, as if it were the front 
of a small ridge, its posts standing on end, side by 
side, in close formation. Below it, covering the front 
of the ridge down to the line of the trail, is an enor- 
mous talus mass of broken pieces. The appropriate- 



4IO THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

ness of the name strikes one at the first glance. This 
is really a postpile, every post carefully hewn to pat- 
tern, all of nearly equal length. The talus heap be- 
low suggests that his Satanic Majesty was utilizing it 
also as a woodpile, and had sawn many of the posts 
into lengths to fit the furnaces which we have been 
taught that he keeps hot for the wicked. 

Certainly it is a beautiful, interesting, and even 
an imposing spectacle. One also thinks of it as a 
gigantic organ, whose many hundred pipes rise many 
feet in air. Its lofty position, seen from the view- 
point of the trail, is one of dignity; it overlooks the 
pines and firs surrounding the clearing in which the 
observer stands. The trees on the higher level scarcely 
overtop it; in part, it is outlined against the sky. 

"The Devil's Postpile," writes Professor Joseph 
N. LeConte, Muir's successor as the prophet of the 
Sierra, *4s a wonderful cliff of columnar basalt, facing 
the river. The columns are quite perfect prisms, 
nearly vertical and fitted together like the cells of a 
honeycomb. Most of the prisms are pentagonal, 
though some are of four or six sides. The standing 
columns are about two feet in diameter and forty feet 
high. At the base of the cliff is an enormous basalt 
structure, but, wherever the bed-rock is exposed be- 
neath the pumice covering, the same formation can 
be seen." 

An error in the proclamation papers made the 
official title of this monument the Devil Postpile, and 
thus it must legally appear in all official documents. 



THE MUIR WOODS 411 

The reservation also includes the Rainbow Fall 
of the San Juan River, one of the most beautiful 
waterfalls of the sub-Sierra region, besides soda springs 
and hot springs. This entire reservation was orig- 
inally included in the Yosemite National Park, but 
was cut out by an unappreciative committee appointed 
to revise boundaries. It is to be hoped that Congress 
will soon restore it to its rightful status. 

Devil's Tower National Monument 

A structure similar in nature to the Devil's Post- 
pile, but vastly greater in size and sensational quality, 
forms one of the most striking natural spectacles east 
of the Rocky Mountains. The Devil's Tower is unique. 
It rises with extreme abruptness from the rough 
Wyoming levels just west of the Black Hills. It is 
on the banks of the Belle Fourche River, which later, 
encircling the Black Hills around the north, finds its 
way into the Big Cheyenne and the Missouri. 

This extraordinary tower emerges from a rounded 
forested hill of sedimentary rock which rises six hun- 
dred feet above the plain; from the top of that the tower 
rises six hundred feet still higher. It is visible for a 
hundred miles or more in every direction. Before the 
coming of the white man it was the landmark of the 
Indians. Later it served a useful purpose in guiding 
the early explorers. 

To-day it is the point which draws the eye for many 
miles. The visitor approaching by automobile sees it 
hours away, and its growth upon the horizon as he 



412 THE BOOK OF THE J^ATIONAL PARKS 

approaches is not his least memorable experience. 
It has the effect at a distance of an enormous up- 
pointing finger which has been amputated just below 
the middle joint. When near enough to enable one 
to distinguish the upright flutings formed by its 
closely joined pentagonal basaltic prisms, the illusion 
vanishes. These, bending inward from a flaring base, 
straighten and become nearly perpendicular as they 
rise. Now, one may fancy it the stump of a tree more 
than a hundred feet in diameter whose top imagination 
sees piercing the low clouds. But close by, all similes 
become futile; then the DeviFs Tower can be likened 
to nothing but itself. 

This column is the core of a volcanic formation 
which doubtless once had a considerably larger circum- 
ference. At its base lies an immense talus of broken 
columns which the loosening frosts and the winter 
gales are constantly increasing; the process has been 
going on for untold thousands of years, during which 
the softer rock of the surrounding plains has been eroded 
to its present level. 

One may climb the hill and the talus. The column 
itself cannot be climbed except by means of special 
apparatus. Its top is nearly flat and elliptical, with 
a diameter varying from sixty to a hundred feet. . 

Pinnacles National Monument 

Forty miles as the crow flies east of Monterey, 
CaUfomia, in a spur of the low Coast Range, is a 
region which erosion has carved into many fantastic 



THE MUIR WOODS 413 

shapes. Because of its crowded pointed rocks, it has 
been set apart under the title of the Pinnacles National 
Monument. For more than a century and a quarter 
it was known as Vancouver's Pinnacles because the 
great explorer visited it while his ships lay at anchor 
in Monterey Bay, and afterward described it in his 
"Voyages and Discoveries." It is unfortunate that 
the historical allusion was lost when it became a 
national reservation. 

Two deep gorges, bordered by fantastic walls 
six hundred to a thousand feet high, and a broad semi- 
circular, flower-grown amphitheatre, constitute the 
central feature. Deep and narrow tributary gorges 
furnish many of the curious and intricate forms which 
for many years have made the spot popular among 
sightseers. Rock masses have fallen upon the side 
walls of several of these lesser gorges, converting them 
into picturesque winding tunnels and changing deep 
alcoves into caves which require candles to see. 

It is a region of very unusual interest and charm. 

Shoshone Cavern National Monument 

On the way to the Yellowstone National Park by 
way of the Wyoming entrance at Cody, and three 
miles east of the great Shoshone Dam, a limestone cave 
has been set apart under the title of the Shoshone 
Cavern National Monument. The way in is rough 
and precipitous and, after entering the cave, a descent 
by rope is necessary to reach the chambers of unusual 
beauty. One may then journey for more than a mile 



414 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

through galleries some of which are heavily incrusted 
with crystals. 

Lewis and Clark Cavern National Monument 

Approaching the crest of the Rockies on the 
Northern Pacific Railroad, the Lewis and Clark Cav- 
ern is passed fifty miles before reaching Butte. Its 
entrance is perched thirteen hundred feet above the 
broad valley of the Jefferson River, which the cele- 
brated explorers followed on their westward journey; 
it overlooks fifty miles of their course. 

The cavern, which has the usual characteristics 
of a limestone cave, slopes sharply back from its main 
entrance, following the dip of the strata. Some of its 
vaults are decorated in great splendor. The depreda- 
tions of vandals were so damaging that in 19 16 its 
entrance was closed by an iron gate. 

This cavern is the only memorial of the Lewis and 
Clark expedition in the national parks system; there 
is no record that the explorers entered it or knew of 
its existence. 

Two hundred and thirty miles east of the Cavern, 
Clark inscribed his name and the date, July 25, 1806, 
upon the face of a prominent butte known as Pompey's 
Pillar. This would have been a far more appropriate 
monument to the most important of American explora- 
tions than the limestone cave. In fact, the Department 
of the Interior once attempted to have it proclaimed a 
national monument; the fact that it lay within an 
Indian allotment prevented. The entire course of 



THE MUIR WOODS 41 5 

this great expedition should be marked at significant 
points by appropriate national monuments. 

Wind Cave National Park 

In the southwestern corner of South Dakota, on 
the outskirts of the Black Hills, is one of the most in- 
teresting limestone caverns of the country. It was 
named Wind Cave because, with the changes of tem- 
perature during the day, strong currents of wind blow 
alternately into and out of its mouth. It has many 
long passages and fine chambers gorgeously decorated. 
It is a popular resort. 

The United States Biological Survey maintains a 
game-preserve. 

Jewel Cave National Monument 

Northwest of Wind Cave, thirteen miles west and 
south of Custer, South Dakota boasts another lime- 
stone cavern of peculiar beauty, through whose en- 
trance also the wind plays pranks. It is called Jewel 
Cave because many of its crystals are tinted in various 
colors, often very brilliantly. Under torchlight the 
effect is remarkable. 

Connecting chambers have been explored for more 
than three miles, and there is much of it yet unknown. 

Oregon Caves National Monument 

In the far southwestern corner of Oregon, about 
thirty miles south of Grant's Pass, upon slopes of coast 
mountains and at an altitude of four thousand feet, is 



4i6 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

a group of large limestone caves which have been set 
apart by presidential proclamation under the title of 
the Oregon Caves National Monument. Locally they 
are better known as the Marble Halls of Oregon. 

There are two entrances at different levels, the 
passages and chambers following the dip of the strata. 
A considerable stream, the outlet of the waters which 
dissolved these caves in the solid limestone, passes 
through. The wall decorations, and, in some of the 
chambers, the stalagmites and stalactites, are exceed- 
ingly fine. The vaults and passages are unusually 
large. There is one chamber twenty-five feet across 
whose ceiling is believed to be two hundred feet high. 

Mount Olympus National Monument 

For sixty miles or more east and west across the 
Olympian Peninsula, which is the forested north- 
western corner of Washington and the United States 
between Puget Sound and the Pacific Ocean, stretch 
the Olympian Mountains. The country is a rugged 
wilderness of tumbled ranges, grown with magnificent 
forests above which rise snowy and glaciered sum- 
mits. Its climax is Mount Olympus, eight thousand 
one hundred feet in altitude, rising about twenty-five 
miles equidistant from the Strait of Juan de Fuca 
upon the north and the Pacific Ocean upon the west. 

The entire peninsula is extremely wild. It is 
skirted by a road along its eastern and part of its 
northern edges, connecting the water-front towns. 
Access to the mountain is by arduous trail. The reser- 



THE MUIR WOODS 417 

vation contains nine hundred and fifty square miles. 
Although possessing unusual scenic beauty, it was re- 
served for the purjDose of protecting the Olympic elk, 
a species pecuhar to the region. Deer and other wild 
animals also are abundant. 

Wheeler National Monument 

High under the Continental Divide in south- 
western Colorado near Creede, a valley of high alti- 
tude, grotesquely eroded in tufa, rhyohte, and other 
volcanic rock, is named the Wheeler National Monu- 
ment in honor of Captain George Montague Wheeler, 
who conducted geographical explorations between 1869 
and 1879. Its deep canyons are bordered by lofty 
pinnacles of rock. It is beHeved that General John 
C. Fremont here met the disaster which drove back 
his exploring-party of 1848, fragments of harness and 
camp equipment and skeletons of mules having been 
found. 

Verendrye National Monuaient 

The first exploration of the northern United States 
east of the Rocky Mountains is commemorated by 
the Verendrye National Monument at the Old Crossing 
of the Missouri River in North Dakota. Here rises 
Crowhigh Butte, on the Fort Berthold Indian Reser- 
vation, an eminence commanding a wide view in every 
direction. 

Verendrye, the celebrated French explorer, started 
from the north shore of Lake Superior about 1740 and 



4i8 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

passed westward and southward into the regions of 
the great plains. He or his sons, for the records of 
their journeys are confusing, passed westward into 
Montana along a course which Lewis and Clark paral- 
leled in 1806, swung southward in the neighborhood of 
Fort Benton, and skirted the Rockies nearly to the 
middle of Wyoming, passing within a couple of hundred 
miles of the Yellowstone National Park. 

Crowhigh Butte is supposed to have given the 
Verendryes their first extensive view of the upper 
Missouri. The butte was long a landmark to guide 
early settlers to Old Crossing. 

Sully's Hill National Park 

Congress created the Sully's Hill National Park 
in North Dakota in 1904 in response to a local de- 
mand. Its hills and meadows constitute a museum of 
practically the entire flora of the State. The United 
States Biological Survey maintains there a wild-an- 
imal preserve for elk, bison, antelope, and other animals 
representative of the northern plains. 

Sitka National Monument 

On Baranojff Island, upon the southeastern shore 
of Alaska, is a reservation known as the Sitka National 
Monument which commemorates an important epi- 
sode in the early history of Alaska. On this tract, 
which lies within a mile of the steamboat-landing at 
Sitka, formerly stood the village of the Kik-Siti In- 
dians who, in 1802, attacked the settlement of Sitka 



THE MUIR WOODS 419 

and massacred the Russians who had established it. 
Two years later the Russians under Baranoff recovered 
the settlement from the Indians, contrary to the active 
opposition of Great Britain, and established the title 
which they afterward transferred to the United States. 
Graves of some of those who fell in the later battle 
may be seen. 

The reservation is also a fine exhibit of the forest 
and flora of the Alexander Archipelago. Sixteen totem- 
poles remain from the old native days. 

Old Kasaan National Monument 

Remains of the rapidly passing native life of the 
Alexander Archipelago on the southeast coast of Alaska 
are conserved in the Old Kasaan National Monument 
on the east shore of Prince of Wales Island. The vil- 
lage of Old Kasaan, occupied for many years by the 
Hydah tribe and abandoned a decade or more ago, 
contains several community houses of split timber, 
each of which consists of a single room with a common 
fireplace in the middle under a smoke-hole in the centre 
of the roof. Cedar sleeping-booths, each the size of an 
ordinary piano-box, are built around the wall. 

The monument also possesses fifty totem-poles, 
carved and richly colored. 

Of the thirty-six national monuments, twenty- 
four are administered by the National Parks Service, 
ten by the Department of Agriculture, and two by 
the War Department. Congress made the assign- 



420 THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 

merits to the Department of Agriculture on the theory 
that, as these monuments occurred in forests, they could 
be more cheaply administered by the Forest Service; 
but, as many of the other monuments and nearly all 
the national parks also occur in forests, the logic is 
not apparent, and these monuments suffer from dis- 
association with the impetus and machinery of the 
National Park Service. 

The Big Hole Battlefield National Monument, 
about fifty-five miles southwest of Butte, Montana, 
was assigned to the War Department because a battle 
took place there in 1877 between a small force of 
United States troops and a large force of Indians. 



BN 9,81949 




MAP OF YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, CALIFORNIA 



Bisliap 




PROPOSED ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK AND THE SEQUOIA AND 
GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARKS, CALIFORNIA 




CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK, OREGON 




YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, WYOMLNG 
The proposed Jackson Hole addition is enclosed by a broken line south of boundary 




GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, MONTANA 



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